Publications & Testimony

A North Carolina pros­e­cu­tor has announced he will seek the death penal­ty in a case where the vic­tim spoke out against cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and her fam­i­ly oppos­es it. Before her death, col­lege stu­dent and University of North Carolina stu­dent body pres­i­dent Eve Carson told fel­low stu­dents gath­ered for a death penal­ty dis­cus­sion that she did not agree with the death penal­ty due to the flaws in its appli­ca­tion. She not­ed,​“It doesn’t work, in my opinion.”…

Jim Trainum, a police offi­cer of over 25 years, recent­ly dis­cussed how shocked he was to dis­cov­er how he and oth­er offi­cers were able to obtain a con­fes­sion to mur­der from an inno­cent woman. Trainum explained,​“Reviewing the tapes years lat­er, I saw that we had fall­en into a clas­sic trap. We ignored evi­dence that our sus­pect might not have been guilty, and dur­ing the inter­ro­ga­tion we inad­ver­tent­ly fed her details of the crime that she repeat­ed back to us in her…

Two dozen exon­er­at­ed ex-death row pris­on­ers from across the coun­try will hold a news con­fer­ence on October 31 in Austin to call for the estab­lish­ment of a statewide com­mis­sion on wrong­ful con­vic­tions and a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in Texas. The 24 men spent a com­bined total of near­ly 200 years on death row before being freed. They will be joined by State Rep. Elliot Naishtat and for­mer Bexar County District Attorney Sam Millsap…

Civil rights lit­i­ga­tor and death penal­ty expert Ronald J. Tabak recent­ly pub­lished​“The Private Bar’s Efforts to Secure Proper Representation for those Facing Execution” in the Justice System Journal. The arti­cle presents an in-depth review of the American Bar Association​’s (ABA) role in ensur­ing effec­tive coun­sel in cap­i­tal cas­es. Tabak recounts the ABA’s efforts since the mid-1980’s to secure com­pe­tent rep­re­sen­ta­tion at every state of legal…

The US Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit issued a stay for Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis on October 24. The fed­er­al appeals court’s three-judge pan­el ordered both sides to draft briefs to address wheter Davis can be exe­cut­ed if he can demon­strate his like­ly inno­cence. Davis’ case has gar­nered both inter­na­tion­al and nation­al atten­tion. Former President Jimmy Carter and the European Union were among those call­ing for a stay of exe­cu­tion. Davis was scheduled to…

Elon University School of Law’s Professor Victor Streib has released a new edi­tion of his book, Streib’s Death Penalty in a Nutshell. It cov­ers both the sub­stan­tive and the pro­ce­dur­al law of the death penal­ty and begins with argu­ments for and against the death penal­ty and an expla­na­tion of its basic con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenges and lim­i­ta­tions. Professor Streib cov­ers cap­i­tal crimes and defens­es, as well as tri­al lev­el and post tri­al pro­ce­dur­al issues. Other topics…

Leading attor­ney, law pro­fes­sor, and advo­cate Anthony Amsterdam was hon­ored by the Southern Center for Human Rights with the Frederick Douglass Human Rights Award in Washington, DC on October 2. Professor Amsterdam con­ducts the Capital Defender Clinic at New York University Law School and is rec­og­nized for his four decades of promi­nent work in cas­es rang­ing from death penal­ty defense to claims of free speech and the press, pri­va­cy, and equal­i­ty of opportunity for…

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens took the occa­sion of the Court’s denial of review to a death row defen­dant in Georgia to ques­tion the ade­qua­cy of the appeals process in that state. On October 20, the Supreme Court denied cer­tio­rari in Walker v. Georgia, an appeal from the Georgia Supreme Court, and Justice Stevens con­curred in that denial. However, Justice Stevens said he found the lack of care­ful scruti­ny by the low­er court to be​“par­tic­u­lar­ly…

The Tennessean called for a more just legal sys­tem as a state leg­isla­tive study com­mit­tee on the death penal­ty con­tin­ues to meet. The com­mit­tee began its work this year after a series of embar­rass­ing mis­takes in apply­ing the death penal­ty in Tennessee. Executions cur­rent­ly are on hold due to a lethal injec­tion chal­lenge brought last year by a death row inmate. The edi­to­r­i­al called the com­mit­tee’s work a​“sliv­er of hope for improvement”…

The BBC documentary ​“Lethal Solution” chron­i­cles reporter Vivian White’s explo­ration of the death penal­ty in the US through the prism of the lethal injec­tion issue. White trav­eled across the US to exe­cu­tion cham­bers where lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions are car­ried out and inter­viewed par­tic­i­pants from a wide variety…