Publications & Testimony

On April 16, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Kentucky​’s three-drug pro­to­col for car­ry­ing out lethal injec­tions does not amount to cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment under the Eighth Amendment. The case, Baze v. Rees, had result­ed in exe­cu­tions being put on hold around the coun­try from the day after the Court agreed to review the issue. Thirty-five of the 36 states with the death penal­ty and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment use lethal injec­tion as their pri­ma­ry method of execution.

April 16,…

Amnesty International recent­ly report­ed that at least 1,252 peo­ple were exe­cut­ed in 24 coun­tries and at least 3,347 peo­ple were sen­tenced to death in over 50 coun­tries in 2007. Amnesty esti­mates that there are up to 27,500 peo­ple on death row world­wide. Their fig­ures rep­re­sent a drop in exe­cu­tions from 1,591 in 2006, par­tic­u­lar­ly in China which went from over 1,000 exe­cu­tions in 2006 to 470 last year. However, exe­cu­tion fig­ures are con­sid­ered a state secret in China and the…

The March 2008 issue of the Pierce Law Review explores many aspects of the death penal­ty through arti­cles writ­ten by renowned death penal­ty schol­ars and attor­neys. With a for­ward by Christopher M. Johnson, the Review exam­ines the death penal­ty at indi­vid­ual, soci­etal, and inter­na­tion­al lev­els. To coin­cide with the pub­li­ca­tion of this issue, the Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire held a pan­el dis­cus­sion on the death penal­ty on April 15,…

The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) recent­ly com­plet­ed a study of the effect of exe­cu­tions on homi­cide rates and found that both states that exe­cute many peo­ple and states that exe­cute no one show the biggest decline in homi­cides (34% and 36% declines, respec­tive­ly). States that exe­cute few peo­ple have the least decline (24%) in homi­cides. According to the study, ​“This pecu­liar result sug­gests the death penal­ty is irrel­e­vant to homi­cide.” The study looked at the effect…

On April 8, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a hear­ing on ​“The Adequacy of Representation in Capital Cases.” Sen. Russ Feingold (D‑WI) presided over the ses­sion of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, which heard tes­ti­mo­ny from a vari­ety of experts includ­ing Michael Greco, for­mer President of the American Bar Association, Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, the Honorable Carolyn Temin of the Court of Common Pleas in Pennsylvania, and…

A forth­com­ing study to be pub­lished in the Fordham Urban Law Journal found that almost all states that use a par­a­lyz­ing drug in the lethal injec­tion of death row inmates for­bid the use of this same drug in euth­a­niz­ing ani­mals. Ty Alper, the asso­ciate direc­tor of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, con­duct­ed the research that found that 42 states do not approve neu­ro­mus­cu­lar block­ing agents in the ordi­nary euthana­sia of animals.

After the Pentagon announced ear­li­er this year that it would seek the death penal­ty for six Guantánamo Bay detainees, lit­tle progress has been made in the case. According to The American Lawyer, the mil­i­tary com­mis­sions have had dif­fi­cul­ties in find­ing qual­i­fied and will­ing defense attor­neys to rep­re­sent the six men who are accused of plan­ning the September 11 attacks. Tom Fleener, a for­mer mil­i­tary lawyer, said, ​“I don’t believe any [of the 15 attor­neys in the office of the…

In a poten­tial­ly far reach­ing rul­ing, a tri­al judge in New Mexico has barred the state from seek­ing the death penal­ty because the leg­is­la­ture has failed to pro­vide ade­quate fund­ing for defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion. The state’s Attorney General, Gary King, agreed that the cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion can­not go for­ward. After find­ing that fund­ing for the defense was insuf­fi­cient and raised con­sti­tu­tion­al prob­lems, King wrote, ​“The state now con­fess­es the motion to dis­miss filed here­in and can­not in…

A recent Colorado poll con­duct­ed by RBI Strategies and Research found that 63% of cit­i­zens believe that mon­ey spent on the death penal­ty would be bet­ter used to close unsolved mur­der cas­es. Citizens like­ly to vote in the next elec­tion were told that the death penal­ty costs the state an extra $3 mil­lion per year, and then asked ​“would you favor or oppose replac­ing the death penal­ty with life impris­on­ment with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, and using the mon­ey saved to track down and…