Publications & Testimony

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…

The coun­try’s mur­der rate declined 2.7% in 2007. The rate dropped the most in the Northeast, and declined in the Midwest and the West, but increased in the South. According to the pre­lim­i­nary Uniform Crime Report pub­lished by the FBI, vio­lent crime declined gen­er­al­ly by 1.4 per­cent in 2007 in the U.S.​“This report sug­gests that vio­lent crime is decreas­ing and remains near his­toric low lev­els,” said Peter Carr, Principal Deputy Director of Public Affairs for the Justice…

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s deci­sion uphold­ing Kentucky’s lethal injec­tion process on April 16, there have been 9 exe­cu­tions:William Lynd GA 5/​6/​08Earl Berry MS 5/​21/​08Kevin Green VA 5/​27/​08Curtis Osborne GA 6/​4/​08David Hill SC 6/​6/​08 Karl Chamberlain TX 6/​11/​08Terry Short OK 6/​17/​08 James Reed SC 6/​20/​08Robert Yarbrough VA 6/​25/​08Race of Defendants: 5 white, 4 blackRace of Victims: 7 white,…

In 1996, Illinois Governor Jim Edgar com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of Guin Garcia to life with­out parole, even though Garcia her­self had stopped fight­ing for her life. Garcia would have been the first woman exe­cut­ed in the U.S. in twelve years. She had been con­vict­ed of killing the man who had phys­i­cal­ly abused her, but she had dropped her appeals because she said she was done​“beg­ging for her life.” Chicago Sun-Times reporter Carol Marin fol­lowed Garcia’s case…

Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of Percy Walton (pic­tured) to life in prison with­out parole. Kaine can­celled the exe­cu­tion, sched­uled for 9pm on June 10, because​“one can­not rea­son­ably con­clude that Walton is ful­ly aware of the pun­ish­ment he is about to suf­fer and why he is to suf­fer it”. The Governor found​“that Walton’s clemen­cy peti­tion pre­sent­ed sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence that Walton had schiz­o­phre­nia, that such…

Mexico has returned to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in seek­ing a stay of exe­cu­tion for Mexican-born inmates in the U.S. Mexico request­ed the U.N.‘s high­est court, com­mon­ly referred to as the World Court, to inter­vene because the United States has failed to com­ply with an ear­li­er ICJ judg­ment order­ing a review of the tri­als of the Mexican cit­i­zens. The World Court ruled in 2004 that the U.S. vio­lat­ed the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations…

A new Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit has been formed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to address con­cerns in the jus­tice sys­tem and to work with inmates who may have been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed. The state’s high­est court for crim­i­nal mat­ters will study issues such as eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, crime lab reli­a­bil­i­ty, police inter­ro­ga­tions, and stan­dards for pre­serv­ing evi­dence. Since 2001, 33 men have been exon­er­at­ed in Texas, includ­ing one man…

A recent law review arti­cle explores the qual­i­ty of defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion in cap­i­tal cas­es in Tennessee. Authors William Redick, Jr., Bradley Maclean, and M. Shane Truett con­duct­ed an in depth study of Tennessee death penal­ty cas­es in their article, ​“Pretend Justice – Defense Representation in Tennessee Death Penalty Cases” in the University of Memphis Law Review. The arti­cle argues that Tennessee fails to pro­vide effec­tive defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion in death…

Richard Taylor, a death row inmate in Tennessee suf­fer­ing from severe men­tal ill­ness, was resen­tenced to life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole after a plea bar­gain with the state. Taylor was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the killing of a prison guard in 1981 after the prison had stopped giv­ing him his anti-psy­­chot­ic med­ica­tion. Deputy District Attorney Derek Smith said,​“Our office decid­ed that it would be in the best inter­est of the…

Terry Lyn Short is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on June 17 in Oklahoma. He was con­vict­ed of caus­ing a fire that killed Ken Yamamoto in 1995. A key wit­ness against Short at tri­al was a jail­house infor­mant who tes­ti­fied in return for lenien­cy on charges that he was fac­ing. Defense coun­sel at tri­al sought to present tes­ti­mo­ny of a third inmate in the same cell who was pre­pared to refute every­thing that the jail­house infor­mant had said. However, the trial…