Publications & Testimony

A men­tal­ly retard­ed man in Texas accept­ed a life sen­tence for a mur­der that occurred over 28 years ago. Johnny Paul Penry was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death for the sex­u­al assault and mur­der of Pamela Mosley Carpenter, a rel­a­tive of a pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball star. Penry’s death sen­tence was over­turned twice by the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to the plea agree­ment on February 15, 2008, the pros­e­cu­tion was insist­ing on a fourth cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing hear­ing for Penry. In 1989, the U.S.

Judge Stephen Roth of Utah has decid­ed to force an unwill­ing attor­ney to han­dle the appeal of death-row inmate Ralph Leroy Menzies after no qual­i­fied lawyers were will­ing to take the assign­ment for the amount of pay offered. ​“The court ulti­mate­ly con­cludes that it has the author­i­ty to appoint unwill­ing coun­sel to rep­re­sent the peti­tion­er here, but only if the attor­ney appoint­ed is just­ly com­pen­sat­ed,” Roth…

By MICHAEL C. DORF Wednesday, February 13, 2008FindLaw’s…

Days after the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the elec­tric chair was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, a Lincoln Journal Star edi­to­r­i­al urged the state to recon­sid­er the death penal­ty: ​“Instead of rush­ing to pass a new means of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the Legislature should take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to final­ly get rid of the death penal­ty.” Nebraska was the only state to retain the elec­tric chair as its sole means of exe­cu­tion. The paper not­ed that it was the right time to take a broad­er look at the death…

Nebraska Supreme Court Rules Electrocution Unconstitutional The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled on February 8, 2008, that elec­tro­cu­tion is cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment under the state’s con­sti­tu­tion, out­law­ing the elec­tric chair in the only state that still used it as its sole means of…

Kennedy Brewer, who spent almost 15 years on Mississippi’s death row for the 1992 mur­der and rape of his girlfriend’s 3‑year-old daugh­ter, has been exon­er­at­ed of the charges, and anoth­er man, Justin Johnson, has been arrest­ed for the same crime. A 2001 inves­ti­ga­tion by the Innocence Project found that the semen on the victim’s body did not match Brewer’s DNA, but did match Johnson’s. Johnson was a sus­pect ear­ly in the case, and his blood was col­lect­ed and pre­served in the Mississippi…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) recent­ly ordered relief for two death row inmates, acknowl­edg­ing that a U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing from last year affect­ed a series of cas­es that were tried before the state changed its death penal­ty statute. The Texas CCA reversed the death sen­tence of Jose Angel Moreno, whose exe­cu­tion was stayed just hours before it was to occur last May. He may now have a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to present a range of mitigating…

In a recent edi­to­r­i­al, the Concord Monitor advo­cat­ed against expand­ing New Hampshire’s death penal­ty law to include mul­ti­ple-mur­der offens­es, as some law­mak­ers have pro­posed. Instead, they say, ​“the death penal­ty should be elim­i­nat­ed, not expand­ed.” The edi­to­r­i­al cites prob­lems in the death penal­ty process, such as wrong­ful con­vic­tions, high costs, and its arbi­trari­ness, as rea­sons for abo­li­tion. The Monitor also writes that the death penal­ty is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive, not­ing, ​“It…