Publications & Testimony

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…

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 prison. ​“Smith made…

Prof. James Acker has pub­lished an arti­cle in the lat­est edi­tion of the Vermont Law Review enti­tled, ​“Be Careful What You Ask For: Lessons from New York’s Recent Experience with Capital Punishment.” The arti­cle explores the var­i­ous stan­dards by which the death penal­ty was eval­u­at­ed dur­ing the last decade in New York. The pub­lic debate first addressed the ques­tion of, ​“Is it right?” with a focus on ret­ri­bu­tion, moral­i­ty and reli­gion. The sec­ond set of ques­tions addressed was, ​“Is it…

On June 16, 2008, the Council of the European Union (EU) meet­ing in Luxembourg released a state­ment on General Affairs and External Relations. The doc­u­ment con­tained a restate­ment of its 1998 Human Rights Guideline on the death penal­ty. The Council, con­sist­ing of almost all Foreign Ministers in the EU, stat­ed that it ​“reaf­firms that work­ing towards uni­ver­sal abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty con­sti­tutes an inte­gral objec­tive of the EU’s human rights pol­i­cy.” The Council reasserted the…

UPDATE: The Texas District Court judge that set Charles Hood’s exe­cu­tion date has with­drawn the war­rant for exe­cu­tion and recused him­self from the case, there­by like­ly delay­ing the exe­cu­tion indef­i­nite­ly. Hood’s attor­neys filed a motion for dis­cov­ery of infor­ma­tion about the affair between the judge and pros­e­cu­tor at Hood’s tri­al. (Dallas Morning News, June 17, 2008). Hood was grant­ed a 30-day reprieve by the gov­er­nor.Charles Hood is sched­uled to be executed in…

Charles Hood was placed in the death cham­ber sev­er­al times on June 17 before Texas announced that it would be unable to fol­low its lethal injec­tion pro­to­col pri­or to mid­night when the exe­cu­tion war­rant expired. The day was filled with appeal fil­ings, court deci­sions, and dis­missals right until the mid­night dead­line. The con­tro­ver­sy began a week ago when Hood’s attor­neys filed motions assert­ing that the pre­sid­ing judge and lead pros­e­cu­tor had a roman­tic rela­tion­ship during his…

A new study has been released that explores the cor­re­la­tions between coun­tries’ legal, polit­i­cal, and reli­gious sys­tems and their use of the death penal­ty. Professors David Greenberg from New York University and Valerie West of John Jay College exam­ined data from 193 nations to test why some coun­tries reg­u­lar­ly use cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment while oth­ers have aban­doned it alto­geth­er. They found, ​“In part, a country’s death penal­ty sta­tus is linked to its gen­er­al punitiveness towards…

Larry Fitzgerald served as the offi­cial spokesman for Texas exe­cu­tions for eight years. He rep­re­sent­ed the state through 219 lethal injec­tions. Retired in August 2003, Fitzgerald left with what he refers to as a, ​“PhD in prison life.” Due to his exper­tise with the Texas prison sys­tem, defense attor­neys have been uti­liz­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny in death penal­ty cas­es to describe to the jury why the prison sys­tem offers a suit­able alter­na­tive to a death sen­tence. He…

A recent audit of the con­struc­tion costs for a new death row facil­i­ty at California’s San Quentin prison revealed that esti­mates have soared over 80% from pre­vi­ous pro­jec­tions. Ground still has not been bro­ken for the project, but the new death row is like­ly to require near­ly $400 mil­lion, instead of the $220 mil­lion orig­i­nal­ly quot­ed, and it will pro­vide even few­er cells than planned. As an aver­age of 12 new con­demned inmates arrive at San Quentin annu­al­ly, the new…