Publications & Testimony

Gerald Kogan, for­mer Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, who has also served as a pros­e­cu­tor, defense attor­ney, and tri­al judge, recent­ly expressed con­cerns about Florida’s death penal­ty sys­tem. ​“Florida’s sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is bro­ken,” he wrote in the St. Petersburg Times. ​“Florida’s jus­tice sys­tem fails on many fronts.” He point­ed out that ​“Florida has become the hold­er of a dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion: more indi­vid­u­als con­vict­ed of mur­der (22) have been exon­er­at­ed from our death…

Legal schol­ar Cass Sunstein and researcher Justin Wolfers recent­ly joined in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post respond­ing to the U.S. Supreme Court’s cita­tion of their work in Baze v. Rees, the deci­sion that approved lethal injec­tion and opened the way to recent exe­cu­tions. Justice Stevens had cit­ed Wolfer’s research as evi­dence of the lack of deter­rence of the death penal­ty while Justice Scalia cit­ed Sunstein’s writ­ings indi­cat­ing a ​“a sig­nif­i­cant body of recent evi­dence that capital…

A recent law review arti­cle argues that cap­i­tal defen­dants’ right to expert assis­tance would grow stronger through the revi­tal­iza­tion of the 1983 Supreme Court deci­sion in Ake v. Oklahoma. The author explains that recent court deci­sions and the revised American Bar Association Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Council in Death Penalty Cases ​“offer the hope that the the­o­ret­i­cal enti­tle­ment of Ake will be ful­ly real­ized.” As a result, the arti­cle argues that one of two…

On June 30^th, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice released a 107-page report on the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem, call­ing it ​“dys­func­tion­al” and a ​“bro­ken sys­tem.” The Commission, chaired by for­mer Attorney General John Van de Kamp, came to the con­clu­sion that California would save hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars if cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was elim­i­nat­ed. The report states, ​“The fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims are cru­el­ly delud­ed into believ­ing that jus­tice will be…

According to a new study by the Associated Press, there has been a sharp drop in the use of the death penal­ty in Ohio as pros­e­cu­tors are tak­ing advan­tage of a new law allow­ing them to seek a sen­tence of life with­out parole with­out first pur­su­ing the death penal­ty. The sen­tence of life with­out parole used to be only an option for jurors weigh­ing an alter­na­tive to a death sen­tence. According to the AP, ​“Prosecutors around Ohio, cit­ing the abil­i­ty to pur­sue harsh punishment…

According to a new study by the Associated Press, there has been a sharp drop in the use of the death penal­ty in Ohio as pros­e­cu­tors are tak­ing advan­tage of a new law allow­ing them to seek a sen­tence of life with­out parole with­out first pur­su­ing the death penal­ty. The sen­tence of life with­out parole used to be only an option for jurors weigh­ing an alter­na­tive to a death sen­tence. According to the AP, ​“Prosecutors around Ohio, cit­ing the abil­i­ty to pur­sue harsh punishment…

Ohio pros­e­cu­tors are tak­ing advan­tage of their new option of life with­out parole, seek­ing it much more often than the death penal­ty. The life sen­tence with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole used to only be an option for jurors weigh­ing an alter­na­tive to a death sen­tence. ​“Prosecutors around Ohio, cit­ing the abil­i­ty to pur­sue harsh pun­ish­ment with­out going through the com­pli­ca­tion and expense of a death penal­ty case are start­ing to take advan­tage of the 2005 law,” and the ​“num­ber of death penalty…

On June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al a Louisiana statute that allowed the death penal­ty for the rape of a child where the vic­tim did not die. In Kennedy v. Louisiana, the Court held that all such laws, where the crime against an indi­vid­ual involved no mur­der or intent to mur­der, were not in keep­ing with the nation­al con­sen­sus restrict­ing the death penal­ty to the worst offens­es. As a result, the only two peo­ple sen­tenced to death for this crime in the…

A for­mer Pennsylvania police chief was sen­tenced to life with­out parole on June 20, 2008, for the mur­der of his 31-year old ex-wife after the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly spoke against a death sen­tence at the penal­ty hear­ing. The dis­trict attor­ney had planned to seek the death penal­ty against Richard Curran, just as he had for every mur­der case in the last 13 years. However, Bonnie Smith, the victim’s moth­er, tes­ti­fied at the penal­ty phase that her fam­i­ly want­ed him to be giv­en life in…