Publications & Testimony

On March 25, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6 – 3 in Medellin v. Texas (No. 06 – 984) that the President does not have the author­i­ty to order states to bypass their pro­ce­dur­al rules and com­ply with a rul­ing from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The case arose from an appeal by Jose Medellin, a Mexican cit­i­zen on Texas’ death row who, along with 50 oth­er Mexican death row inmates, filed suit in the ICJ alleg­ing a vio­la­tion of their rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular…

On March 20, the Georgia State Senate over­whelm­ing­ly (44 – 7) reject­ed a pro­pos­al that would have allowed non-unan­i­mous jury sen­tenc­ing ver­dicts in cap­i­tal cas­es. The pro­pos­al would have per­mit­ted a judge to impose a death sen­tence when at least 10 of 12 jurors sup­port­ed it. Current Georgia law requires that the jury vote unan­i­mous­ly for a death sen­tence. Some oppo­nents of the bill said it would have put Georgia’s entire death penal­ty law in jeop­ardy. (All oth­er death penal­ty states that allow…

A recent Harris Interactive poll of over 1,000 American adults found that the num­ber of peo­ple who oppose the death penal­ty has increased since 2003. Thirty-per­cent (30%) of those sam­pled oppose the death penal­ty, an increase of 8 per­cent­age points in the past 5 years. The per­cent­age of respon­dents who ​“believe in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment” has dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly since 1997, when 75% sup­port­ed the death penal­ty. In 2008, that num­ber had declined to 63%, the low­est num­ber in recent years. …

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7 – 2 on March 19 that the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Allen Snyder should be over­turned because the tri­al judge allowed a poten­tial juror to be reject­ed on what appeared to be racial grounds. The deci­sion, writ­ten by Justice Samuel Alito, focused on the elim­i­na­tion of an African-American man from jury pan­el. The Court reject­ed the pros­e­cu­tion’s non-racial rea­sons for strik­ing this juror: ​“The implau­si­bil­i­ty of this expla­na­tion is rein­forced by the prosecutor’s…

U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said that he hopes that the Guantanamo pris­on­ers accused of ter­ror­ism do not receive the death penal­ty in the upcom­ing Military Commission tri­als because it would give them the mar­tyr­dom that they want. In a recent talk to British eco­nom­ic stu­dents, Mukasey said he sup­ports the death penal­ty, but, ​“In a way I kind of hope from a per­son­al stand­point … I kind of hope they don’t get it. Because many of them want to be mar­tyrs .…” Prosecuting…

On March 17, the Georgia Supreme Court vot­ed 4 – 3 against Troy Davis’ request for a new tri­al. Davis, who is on death row for the 1989 mur­der of a police offi­cer, claims he is inno­cent and that he was a vic­tim of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty. Since his tri­al in 1991, sev­en of the wit­ness­es called by the pros­e­cu­tion have recant­ed their tes­ti­mo­ny. Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears wrote in the dis­sent­ing opin­ion that Davis should at least have a hear­ing because, ​“In this case, near­ly every wit­ness who…

The Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to announce the intro­duc­tion of a new Web page on Native Americans and the death penal­ty. The page con­tains infor­ma­tion on the use of the death penal­ty against Native Americans and includes the results of an exten­sive his­tor­i­cal study con­duct­ed by David V. Baker. His research was recent­ly pub­lished in the December 2007 edi­tion of Criminal Justice Studies, and is the first of its kind. Baker report­ed 464 exe­cu­tions of Native Americans…

Family mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims tes­ti­fied before the Maryland Senate Judiciary Committee on March 6 about the painful toll the death penal­ty has tak­en on their lives, stat­ing that the resources spent on seek­ing death sen­tences could be bet­ter used else­where. ​“I’ve watched too many fam­i­lies go through this to make me believe the sys­tem will ever work,” said Kathy Garcia, whose nephew was mur­dered 20 years ago. She con­tin­ued, ​“The death penal­ty divides fam­i­lies at the…