Publications & Testimony

In a poten­tial­ly far reach­ing rul­ing, a tri­al judge in New Mexico has barred the state from seek­ing the death penal­ty because the leg­is­la­ture has failed to pro­vide ade­quate fund­ing for defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion. The state’s Attorney General, Gary King, agreed that the cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion can­not go for­ward. After find­ing that fund­ing for the defense was insuf­fi­cient and raised con­sti­tu­tion­al prob­lems, King wrote, ​“The state now con­fess­es the motion to dis­miss filed here­in and cannot in…

A recent Colorado poll con­duct­ed by RBI Strategies and Research found that 63% of cit­i­zens believe that mon­ey spent on the death penal­ty would be bet­ter used to close unsolved mur­der cas­es. Citizens like­ly to vote in the next elec­tion were told that the death penal­ty costs the state an extra $3 mil­lion per year, and then asked ​“would you favor or oppose replac­ing the death penal­ty with life impris­on­ment with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, and using the mon­ey saved to track down and…

By Karen Campbell Boston Globe April 3,…

Glen Edward Chapman, a North Carolina man who was sen­tenced to death for the 1992 mur­ders of Betty Jean Ramseur and Tenene Yvette Conley, was released from death row on April 2 after pros­e­cu­tors dropped all charges against him. In 2007, North Carolina Superior Court Judge Robert C. Ervin grant­ed Chapman a new tri­al, cit­ing with­held evi­dence, ​“lost, mis­placed or destroyed” doc­u­ments, the use of weak, cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence, false tes­ti­mo­ny by the lead inves­ti­ga­tor, and ineffective…

In ​“Confronting Evil: Victims’ Rights in an Age of Terror,” Prof. Wayne Logan of Florida State College of Law exam­ines the use of vic­tim impact evi­dence in mass-vic­tim pros­e­cu­tions, such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb­ing and the ter­ror­ist attacks of September 11. The arti­cle will appear in the forth­com­ing issue of the Georgetown Law Journal. Victim impact evi­dence (VIE) is ​“infor­ma­tion on dece­dents’ per­son­al traits and the ways in which their deaths have adverse­ly affect­ed those left…

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California has released two reports on California’s death penal­ty deal­ing with the high costs and arbi­trari­ness of the sys­tem. The report on costs, ​“The Hidden Death Tax,” found that a cap­i­tal tri­al costs coun­ties at least $1.1 mil­lion more than a non-cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al, and that the state spends an addi­tion­al $117 mil­lion a year pur­su­ing the exe­cu­tion of those already on death row. One tri­al alone cost California $10.9 million.

Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia stayed the upcom­ing exe­cu­tion of Edward Bell, sched­uled for April 8, 2008. In so doing, the gov­er­nor issued a state­ment stay­ing oth­er exe­cu­tions and not­ing the U.S. Supreme Court’s con­sid­er­a­tion of the lethal injec­tion issue (Baze v. Rees). The state­ment also remarked on the dis­rup­tion that the set­ting of an exe­cu­tion date can…

On March 28, two let­ters were sent to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice–one from mem­bers of the law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty and the oth­er from judges, rais­ing con­cerns about the state’s death penal­ty. Thirty law enforce­ment offi­cers, includ­ing cur­rent and for­mer pros­e­cu­tors, police chiefs and oth­er offi­cers, signed a let­ter stat­ing that ​“California’s death penal­ty is bro­ken.” The let­ter cites mul­ti­ple rea­sons why the state’s death…

A UMNS CommentaryBy John C. Goodwin*March 28,…