Publications & Testimony

A recent arti­cle in Time Magazine by Editor-at-large David Von Drehle exam­ines the cur­rent state of the death penal­ty in the United States at a time when the Supreme Court is con­sid­er­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the most wide­ly used method of exe­cu­tion – lethal injec­tion. Von Drehle writes, ​“In a per­fect world, per­haps, the gov­ern­ment would­n’t wait 30 years and sev­er­al hun­dred exe­cu­tions to deter­mine whether an exe­cu­tion method makes sense. But the world of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has nev­er been…

UPDATE: Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio has grant­ed clemen­cy to John Spirko, reduc­ing his death sen­tence to a sen­tence of life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. The gov­er­nor cit­ed ​“the lack of phys­i­cal evi­dence link­ing him to the mur­der, as well as the slim resid­ual doubt about his respon­si­bil­i­ty for the mur­der that aris­es from care­ful scruti­ny of the case record” in his state­ment grant­i­ng the com­mu­ta­tion on Jan. 9. (Warrant of Commutation, Governor of Ohio, January 9, 2008).

Ronald Curtis Chambers, who was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death for the 1975 mur­der of Mike McMahan, may be giv­en a fourth tri­al fol­low­ing a rul­ing by the U.S. Supreme Court. Chambers was 20 at the time of his crime, and has been on death row longer than any oth­er inmate in Texas. His sec­ond tri­al came 10 years after his first, fol­low­ing a Texas court rul­ing that Chambers should have been told that infor­ma­tion from a psy­chi­atric con­sul­ta­tion could be used against him.

The United States Supreme Court will hear argu­ments on Monday, January 7, on whether or not the lethal injec­tion process in Kentucky is a vio­la­tion of the Constitution’s 8^th Amendment ban on cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ments. While the case, Baze v. Rees, has prompt­ed a de fac­to mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, it does not con­cern the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty itself. Currently, 35 of the 36 states with the death penal­ty use vari­a­tions of the same three-drug com­bi­na­tion in…

The Bureau of Justice Statistics typ­i­cal­ly releas­es an annu­al report enti­tled ​“Capital Punishment” con­tain­ing tables and infor­ma­tion on the death penal­ty for the pre­vi­ous year. Although BJS, which is part of the Department of Justice, did not pub­lish a sep­a­rate report for 2006, it did release infor­ma­tion in tab­u­lar form that quan­ti­fies death penal­ty prac­tice in the U.S. Information drawn from BJS’s recent tables…

In a recent front-page arti­cle in the New York Times, Joshua Marquis, the dis­trict attor­ney in Clatsop County, Oregon, and a vice pres­i­dent of the National District Attorneys Association, indi­cat­ed that most pros­e­cu­tors with expe­ri­ence in death penal­ty cas­es are ambiva­lent about it: ​“Any sane pros­e­cu­tor who is involved in cap­i­tal lit­i­ga­tion will real­ly be ambiva­lent about it,” said Marquis, who has long sup­port­ed the death penal­ty. According to the Times, he said the fam­i­lies of murder…

Professor John Donohue of Yale University’s School of Law recent­ly con­duct­ed a study of death sen­tences in Connecticut and found that seek­ing the death penal­ty often cor­re­lat­ed with the race of the vic­tim and the defen­dant, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly with the sever­i­ty of the crimes, as the law requires. ​“There was basi­cal­ly no ratio­nal sys­tem to explain who got the death penal­ty,” Donohue said. ​“It real­ly is about as ran­dom a process as you can pos­si­bly con­struct.” After review­ing 207 mur­der cases…

David Baker has writ­ten a thor­ough and insight­ful analy­sis of how the death penal­ty in the U.S. has been used against Native Americans. In ​“American Indian Executions in Historical Context,” Baker places the exe­cu­tion of Native Americans with­in the his­to­ry of colo­nial­ism, slav­ery and the con­quer­ing of indige­nous tribes in ear­ly America. The arti­cle traces these devel­op­ments to the cur­rent era, about which the author…

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