Publications & Testimony

According to a recent study by Prof. David Sloss of the St. Louis University School of Law, and oth­ers, only a small per­cent­age of eli­gi­ble mur­der cas­es in Missouri are pros­e­cut­ed as death penal­ty cas­es, and even few­er result in a death sen­tence. Only 2.5 per­cent of defen­dants pros­e­cut­ed for inten­tion­al homi­cide are sen­tenced to death. In anoth­er 2.5 per­cent of cas­es, juries reject the death penal­ty. Ninety-five per­cent of inten­tion­al homi­cide cas­es are nev­er pre­sent­ed to the jury as…

By Kiko Martinez San Antonio Current April 30,…

A new study by Professor Scott Phillips of the Univeristy of Denver found that black defen­dants in Houston, Texas, are more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death than white defen­dants, even when oth­er vari­ables are account­ed for. The research, to be pub­lished in a forth­com­ing edi­tion of the Houston Law Review, looked at cas­es eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty in the coun­ty that is the source of the high­est num­ber of exe­cu­tions in Texas, which itself is respon­si­ble for more executions…

The gov­er­nor of Missouri, Matt Blunt, has pro­posed that his state expand the death penal­ty to include cas­es of sex­u­al assault against chil­dren where the vic­tim is not killed. However, accord­ing to an edi­to­r­i­al in the Springfield News-Leader, such a law would not pro­tect chil­dren. Instead, it could make it less like­ly that these offens­es would be report­ed, would put the child in dan­ger of even worse crimes, and would involve the child and the fam­i­ly in years…

Rudolph J. Gerber served as a pros­e­cu­tor and as a judge on Arizona​’s Court of Appeals for 13 years. Earlier in his career, then-state sen­a­tor Sandra Day O’Connor asked Mr. Gerber to draft the statute that even­tu­al­ly became Arizona’s death penal­ty law. In a recent op-ed in the Sacramento Bee, he expressed his con­cerns about the prac­tice of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and said that states should use the present peri­od in which no exe­cu­tions are occur­ring as an…

On April 16, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Kentucky​’s three-drug pro­to­col for car­ry­ing out lethal injec­tions does not amount to cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment under the Eighth Amendment. The case, Baze v. Rees, had result­ed in exe­cu­tions being put on hold around the coun­try from the day after the Court agreed to review the issue. Thirty-five of the 36 states with the death penal­ty and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment use lethal injec­tion as their pri­ma­ry method of execution.

April 16,…

Amnesty International recent­ly report­ed that at least 1,252 peo­ple were exe­cut­ed in 24 coun­tries and at least 3,347 peo­ple were sen­tenced to death in over 50 coun­tries in 2007. Amnesty esti­mates that there are up to 27,500 peo­ple on death row world­wide. Their fig­ures rep­re­sent a drop in exe­cu­tions from 1,591 in 2006, par­tic­u­lar­ly in China which went from over 1,000 exe­cu­tions in 2006 to 470 last year. However, exe­cu­tion fig­ures are con­sid­ered a state secret in China and the…

The March 2008 issue of the Pierce Law Review explores many aspects of the death penal­ty through arti­cles writ­ten by renowned death penal­ty schol­ars and attor­neys. With a for­ward by Christopher M. Johnson, the Review exam­ines the death penal­ty at indi­vid­ual, soci­etal, and inter­na­tion­al lev­els. To coin­cide with the pub­li­ca­tion of this issue, the Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire held a pan­el dis­cus­sion on the death penal­ty on April 15,…