Publications & Testimony

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…

Select pages of DPIC’s Web site are now avail­able in Spanish, German and French. DPIC’s Death Penalty Fact Sheet and oth­er infor­ma­tion are in Spanish. DPIC’s Innocence List Case Descriptions are avail­abile in German. DPIC’s 1998 Report The Death Penalty in Black & White: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides is…

The U.S. Supreme Court denied cer­tio­rari in the Troy Davis case on October 14, despite his claim of inno­cence. Davis had peti­tioned the Court to inter­vene in his case after sev­en of the nine non-police wit­ness­es against him recant­ed their tes­ti­mo­ny. His lawyers said the new evi­dence demon­strat­ed his inno­cence and that anoth­er man had even con­fessed to the killing. The Georgia Board of Pardon and Paroles could still review its ear­li­er deci­sion to deny…

A for­mer Dallas County pros­e­cu­tor has aban­doned his long­stand­ing sup­port of the death penal­ty and is now opposed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment based on recent exon­er­a­tions in Texas and else­where. James Fry, who pros­e­cut­ed Charles Chatman – a man recent­ly exon­er­at­ed from prison in Dallas County – said he was​“shak­en to the core” by the high num­ber of exon­er­a­tions through­out the nation and by evi­dence of flawed eyewitness testimony.

In June 2008, the Office of Defender Services of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts pub­lished a report ana­lyz­ing the cost, qual­i­ty and avail­abil­i­ty of defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion in fed­er­al death penal­ty cas­es. The report deter­mined that fed­er­al cap­i­tal tri­als in which the death penal­ty was sought were sub­stan­tial­ly more expen­sive than non-death penal­ty fed­er­al tri­als; how­ev­er, a death sen­tence was hand­ed down in only one-quarter…

As many coun­tries pre­pare to mark the inter­na­tion­al World Day Against the Death Penalty on October 10, recent trends indi­cate that the world is shift­ing away from cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. According to a report pub­lished by Reprieve, an orga­ni­za­tion that rep­re­sents death row pris­on­ers around the world, 91 coun­tries had abol­ished the death penal­ty for all crimes by the end of 2007, fol­lowed by three more so far in 2008. Even in Central Asia where executions are…

In her new book, Execution’s Doorstep: The True Stories of the Innocent and Near Damned, author Leslie Lytle pro­vides a com­pelling nar­ra­tive recount­ing the har­row­ing jour­neys of five inno­cent men who spent many years on death row. Through exten­sive research and inter­views, Lytle has suc­ceed­ed in reveal­ing the deep pain and suf­fer­ing that such injus­tice yields, putting a human face to the recur­ring prob­lem of inno­cence on death row. The book explores all aspects of…