Publications & Testimony

The Collin County court in Texas has dis­missed cap­i­tal mur­der charges against Michael Blair who had been on death row for the 1993 mur­der of Ashley Estell. After more than a decade of legal appeals and requests for DNA test­ing, the hair evi­dence that had been used to con­vict Blair was shown to be mis­tak­en. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found that no rea­son­able jury would con­vict Blair based on the exist­ing evidence.The District Attorney’s office filed a motion to dismiss…

Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins announced that he will be reex­am­in­ing near­ly 40 death penal­ty con­vic­tions in his coun­ty. No exe­cu­tions will occur in the coun­ty until he has reviewed the cas­es in detail. Watkins said he will start with the old­est cas­es as they are most like­ly to be sched­uled first. ​“I’m not say­ing I’m putting a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty,” said Watkins. ​“It’s say­ing that maybe we should with­draw those dates and look at those cas­es from a new perspective to…

According to the F.B.I.‘s lat­est crime report released on September 15, the South is the only region in the coun­try that expe­ri­enced a rise in its mur­der rate in 2007. The FBI report­ed that the mur­der rate in the coun­try declined to 5.6 mur­ders per 100,000 peo­ple in 2007 from 5.7 in 2006, and the rate declined in the Northeast, the Midwest, and the West. In the South, how­ev­er, the mur­der rate increased from 6.8 in 2006 to 7.0 in 2007, the high­est rate among the four regions. The…

UPDATE: Parole Board Denied Clemency on Sept. 16 and Jack Alderman was…

The U.S. Supreme Court will return to hear oral argu­ments in its new term on October 6. To date, the Court has grant­ed cer­tio­rari in (agreed to hear) three death penal­ty cas­es. Bell v. Kelly will be argued on November 12, 2008. This case orig­i­nat­ed in Virginia and con­cerns the scope of fed­er­al review when the state court has failed to devel­op an issue. Edward Bell claimed that his attor­ney failed to present impor­tant mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence at this sen­tence hear­ing, but this claim…

A new study of the death penal­ty in Arkansas showed racial pat­terns in sen­tenc­ing. University of Iowa law pro­fes­sor David Baldus’ study exam­ined 124 mur­der cas­es filed in one dis­trict from 1990 to 2005. Even after adjust­ing for fac­tors such as the defendant’s crim­i­nal his­to­ry and cir­cum­stances of the crime, black peo­ple who killed white peo­ple were more like­ly than oth­ers to be charged with cap­i­tal mur­der and be sen­tenced to death. ​“It sug­gests to us that there’s a real risk that race may…

A recent Florida case indi­cates that the deci­sion about who is the next per­son to be exe­cut­ed is more depen­dent on a few indi­vid­u­als in the gov­er­nor’s office than on an order­ly process. Richard Henyard is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion this month although 198 oth­er Florida death row inmates were sen­tenced to death before him. One such inmate, Gary Alvord, was sen­tenced to death two months before Henyard was born and has been on death row longer than any oth­er inmate in the nation. When…

Maryland’s Commission on Capital Punishment con­tin­ued with its fourth pub­lic hear­ing on September 5 in Annapolis. Experts tes­ti­fied about the addi­tion­al costs of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment com­pared to life-sen­tence cas­es, the risk of arbi­trari­ness in death sen­tenc­ing, the valid­i­ty of recent deter­rence stud­ies, and the nation­al trends away from the use of the death penal­ty in the U.S. There was also dis­cus­sion about the num­ber of cur­rent cas­es that do not have any DNA evi­dence to confirm or…

UPDATE: CHARLES HOOD’S EXECUTION HAS BEEN STAYED BY THE TEXAS COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS. A Texas state judge has ordered a hear­ing into the accu­sa­tion of an affair between the judge and the pros­e­cu­tor in Charles Hood’s death penal­ty case. With a week to go before Hood’s exe­cu­tion date, the Texas Attorney General also called for a review of the fair­ness of the tri­al. The Attorney General, Greg Abbott, request­ed that the dis­trict court ​“thor­ough­ly review the defendant’s claims before the…