Publications & Testimony

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…

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on June 24 to hear two death penal­ty cas­es, both from Tennessee. The first case, Cone v. Bell, No. 07 – 1114, focus­es on whether fed­er­al courts can con­sid­er issues that state courts dis­missed on state pro­ce­dur­al grounds. The peti­tion­er, Gary Cone, had claimed that his use of drugs mit­i­gat­ed his guilt in the under­ly­ing mur­der of which he was accused. The pros­e­cu­tion at tri­al denied that there was any evidence of…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 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…