Publications & Testimony

On August 17 the United States Supreme Court ordered a new evidentiary hearing for Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis, whose case has drawn worldwide attention because of new evidence of his possible innocence. For the first time in nearly 50 years, the Court has favorably responded to a petition directed to them, rather than as an appeal from other courts. With only two Justices writing in dissent, the Court ordered the lower federal court to hear Davis’ evidence: “The District Court should…

In True Stories of False Confessions, editors Rob Warden and Steven Drizin present articles about some of the key accounts of false confessions in the U.S. justice system written by more than forty authors, including Alex Kotlowitz and John Grisham. The cases are grouped into categories such as brainwashing, inference, fabrication, and mental fragility. This refutes the perception that false confessions represent individual tragedies rather than a systemic flaw in the justice system. The…

The Death Penalty Project of London recently published A Penalty Without Legitimacy: The Mandatory Death Penalty In Trinidad And Tobago (2009), a collection of papers presented at a conference in Trinidad & Tobago in March 2009. The papers include a study of opinions of judges, prosecutors, and counsel on the use of the mandatory death penalty in Trinidad and Tobago and ways to bring its practice in line with other countries that have retained the death penalty. The report also includes…

Governor Beverly Purdue of North Carolina signed the state’s Racial Justice Act into law on August 11, concluding a long period of legislative action surrounding this death penalty statute. Gov. Purdue said in a news release, “I have always been a supporter of death penalty, but I have always believed it must be carried out fairly. The Racial Justice Act ensures that when North Carolina hands down our state’s harshest punishment to our most heinous criminals – the decision is based on the facts…

The Crying Tree is a new novel by Naseem Rakha that raises the real-life question: Could you forgive the man who murdered your son? Rakha is an award-winning broadcast journalist whose work has been heard on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.” The story of her novel is told through the lives of a mother whose son was murdered and the superintendent of a state penitentiary where the defendant’s execution is to take place. Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, said in…

On August 6, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine held a press conference announcing conditional pardons to three of the four sailors known as the Norfolk Four. Danial Williams, Joseph Dick, Eric Williams and Derek Tic were were convicted of the 1997 rape and murder of Michelle Moore-Bosko. The pardoned defendants, Danial Williams, Dick and Tic were originally given life sentences, while Eric Williams was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison and had been released earlier. The governor reduced…

On August 5, the North Carolina senate passed a bill allowing pre-trial defendants and death-row inmates to challenge the death penalty process through the use of statistical studies. The Racial Justice Act allows a defendant facing a capital trial or an inmate sentenced to death to use evidence showing a pattern of racial disparity as a way of challenging racial injustice in the death penalty. Prosecutors would then have the opportunity to rebut the claim that the statistical disparities…

The number of murders in New Jersey declined 24% in the first six months of 2009 compared to the same period last year. Murders declined in 2008, the year after the state abolished the death penalty, marking the first time since 1999 that New Jersey has seen a drop in murders for two consecutive years. Murders dropped 11% in 2007, the year following a state-imposed moratorium on executions, which was instituted in 2006. Governor Jon Corzine, who signed the bill abolishing the death penalty, was…