Publications & Testimony

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…

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…

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…

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…

April…

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…

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…

The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) recent­ly com­plet­ed a study of the effect of exe­cu­tions on homi­cide rates and found that both states that exe­cute many peo­ple and states that exe­cute no one show the biggest decline in homi­cides (34% and 36% declines, respec­tive­ly). States that exe­cute few peo­ple have the least decline (24%) in homi­cides. According to the study,​“This pecu­liar result sug­gests the death penal­ty is irrel­e­vant to homi­cide.” The study…

On April 8, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on ​“The Adequacy of Representation in Capital Cases.” Sen. Russ Feingold (D‑WI) presided over the ses­sion of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, which heard tes­ti­mo­ny from a vari­ety of experts includ­ing Michael Greco, for­mer President of the American Bar Association, Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, the Honorable Carolyn Temin of the Court of Common Pleas in…

A forth­com­ing study to be pub­lished in the Fordham Urban Law Journal found that almost all states that use a par­a­lyz­ing drug in the lethal injec­tion of death row inmates for­bid the use of this same drug in euth­a­niz­ing ani­mals. Ty Alper, the asso­ciate direc­tor of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, con­duct­ed the research that found that 42 states do not approve neu­ro­mus­cu­lar block­ing agents in the ordinary…