Publications & Testimony

On March 7, 2008, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Richard Taylor. The court’s rul­ing grants Taylor a new tri­al due to a vari­ety of con­sti­tu­tion­al errors at his orig­i­nal tri­al. These errors include the denial of his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to coun­sel at a pre-tri­al com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing, the fail­ure of the tri­al court to hold a com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing dur­ing the tri­al, and the fail­ure of the tri­al court to appoint advi­so­ry counsel.

Reverend Joseph B. Ingle’s book, Last Rights: Thirteen Fatal Encounters with the State’s Justice, will be re-released in May with a new intro­duc­tion by Mike Farrell (of M*A*S*H*) and with its orig­i­nal for­ward by William Styron. Rev. Ingle, who has coun­seled inmates on death row for over 30 years, recounts his close rela­tion­ships with 13 of these inmates before their exe­cu­tions. Devoting a chap­ter to each one, Ingle stress­es the need to see each inmate as an indi­vid­ual. He writes, ​“The…

On Monday, April 14, 2008, Seton Hall Law School will be host­ing a con­fer­ence on the recent abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in New Jersey. ​“Legislation, Litigation, Reflection, and Repeal: The Legislative Abolition of the Death Penalty in New Jersey” is an all-day event spon­sored by Fordham Law School, The New Jersey State Bar Association, The New York Bar Association Capital Punishment Committee, and Seton Hall Law School. Four pan­els will exam­ine New Jersey’s death penal­ty from its…

Since the fed­er­al death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1988, the state of New York has been more reluc­tant to impose death sen­tences than oth­er states, accord­ing to the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project. New York fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors have asked juries to impose death sen­tences 19 times, but in only one of those cas­es did they vote for the death penal­ty. Nationally, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors win death penal­ties in about 33% of cas­es. In some cas­es, fed­er­al judges in New York…

Study Reveals Maryland’s Death Penalty is Costing Taxpayers $186 MillionA study released on March 6, 2008 found that Maryland tax­pay­ers are pay­ing $186 mil­lion dol­lars for a sys­tem that has result­ed in five exe­cu­tions since 1978 when the state reen­act­ed the death penal­ty. That would be equiv­a­lent to $37.2 per exe­cu­tion. The study, pre­pared by the Urban Institute, esti­mates that the aver­age cost to Maryland tax­pay­ers for reach­ing a sin­gle death sen­tence is $3 mil­lion — $1.9…

The New Hampshire House of Representatives passed a bill to estab­lish a Commission to Study the Death Penalty. Many offi­cials who have had first-hand expe­ri­ence with New Hampshire’s death penal­ty, includ­ing for­mer Attorneys General Phillip McLaughlin, Peter Heed and Greg Smith, for­mer Superior Court Chief Justice Walter Murphy and for­mer Supreme Court Justice William Batchelder, sup­port the estab­lish­ment of a com­mis­sion to study the state’s death penal­ty pro­ce­dures. If passed, the bill will…

The Innocence Commission, a new book by Jon B. Gould, describes how the advent of DNA test­ing and oth­er foren­sic advances in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem have led to seri­ous efforts to under­stand how so many wrong­ful con­vic­tions have hap­pened. In par­tic­u­lar, The Innocence Commission details the first years of the Innocence Commission for Virginia (ICVA), which was the first in the coun­try to con­duct sys­temic research into all wrong­ful con­vic­tions in the state. Gould, the Chair of ICVA,…

Federal District Court Judge Jack B. Weinstein said recent­ly that seek­ing the death penal­ty against Humberto Pepin Taveras in New York is not worth the effort of pros­e­cu­tors or tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey. ​“Based on the his­to­ry of cas­es tried in met­ro­pol­i­tan New York, the chance of Pepin receiv­ing the death penal­ty is vir­tu­al­ly nil,” Weinstein said. The case against Taveras, who con­fessed to mur­der­ing two drug traf­fick­ers in the 1990s while already serv­ing more than 12 years in prison for oth­er crimes,…

During his 15-year tenure on the court, Orange County Superior Court Judge Donald McCartin sen­tenced nine men to death. Now retired, Judge McCartin no longer believes in the death penal­ty. ​“It’s a waste of time and tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey,” Judge McCartin said. ​“It cost 10 times more to kill these guys than to keep them alive in prison. It’s absurd. And imag­ine the poor vic­tims’ fam­i­lies hav­ing to go through this again and again.” All but one of the nine men Judge McCartin sen­tenced to death still…

Connecticut Superior Court Judge Stanley T. Fuger ruled on February 27 that a suit alleg­ing racial and geo­graph­ic bias in the state’s death penal­ty should not be dis­missed. Judge Fuger is allow­ing the claim from sev­en death row inmates to con­tin­ue because the state’s con­sti­tu­tion gives defen­dants greater legal rights than the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court had reject­ed a sim­i­lar claim about Georgia’s death penal­ty in 1987 based on fed­er­al con­sti­tu­tion­al grounds. In his rul­ing on a…