Publications & Testimony

February 28,…

Two recent arti­cles in the Dallas Morning News detail the lives of those affect­ed by the wrong­ful impris­on­ment of Christopher Ochoa and Richard Danziger in Texas. For some, their faith in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem has been shat­tered. Twelve years after being sen­tenced to life in prison for a 1988 rape and mur­der, Ochoa and Danziger were exon­er­at­ed by DNA evi­dence. At the time of his arrest, Ochoa, after 15 hours of inter­ro­ga­tion, gave a false con­fes­sion to…

At a hear­ing of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice held in Los Angeles, the moth­er of a mur­der vic­tim tes­ti­fied about why she believed the death penal­ty does not serve vic­tims’ needs. Aba Gayle’s daugh­ter, Catherine Blount, was a teenag­er when she was mur­dered in 1980 by Douglas Mickey. At first, Gayle told the Commission, ​“The dis­trict attor­ney assured me that the exe­cu­tion of the man respon­si­ble for Catherine’s mur­der would help me heal, and for…

The Georgia Senate Appropriations Committee cut the state pub­lic defend­er bud­get to $513,000, less than 15% of what Gov. Sonny Perdue had rec­om­mend­ed to cov­er costs until the end of June. The gov­er­nor had orig­i­nal­ly sought $3.6 mil­lion for the Public Defender Standards Council, which is now con­cerned that with­out nec­es­sary funds, the Georgia court sys­tem will come to a stand­still, includ­ing their defense in cap­i­tal cas­es. House Majority Leader Jerry Keen said that addi­tion­al fund­ing would…

A recent poll by NationalChristianPoll​.com found that two-thirds of active Christians who oppose the death penal­ty are con­cerned about judi­cial error that could lead to an inno­cent per­son being exe­cut­ed. The poll also found that of Christians who do sup­port the death penal­ty, 60% do so because of bib­li­cal teach­ings. According to a Pew Forum poll from 2007, the strongest sup­port­ers of the death penal­ty are white evan­gel­i­cals, with 74% approval. However, John Whitehead, pres­i­dent of the…

Supreme Court mulls lethal injec­tions as Christian sup­port for the death penal­ty drops. by Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra Christianity Today…

Victor Streib, who has been research­ing the sub­ject of women and the death penal­ty for 20 years, has released an updat­ed ver­sion of his report ​“Death Penalty for Female Offenders.” In his research, Prof. Streib, a pro­fes­sor at Elon University School of Law in North Carolina and Ohio Northern University’s Pettit College of Law, has found that women are sig­nif­i­cant­ly less like­ly than men to receive a death sen­tence, pos­si­bly because pros­e­cu­tors seem less inclined to seek the…

The Death Penalty Information Center has con­duct­ed a sur­vey of death row pop­u­la­tions as report­ed by the var­i­ous state depart­ments of cor­rec­tion in January/​February 2008. From that sur­vey, the cur­rent death row pop­u­la­tion across the coun­try is 3,263. California con­tin­ues to have the high­est death row pop­u­la­tion with 669 inmates. Florida fol­lows with 388, and Texas has 370 inmates. A state-by-state break­down appears below. Except for Illinois and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, these num­bers are the…