Publications & Testimony

New Study Reveals Deficiencies in Eyewitness Identification Procedures; Legislative Review Set As Georgia law­mak­ers con­vene to review eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­ce­dures in the state, a new study by the Georgia Innocence Project has revealed that 83% of Georgia police agen­cies have no writ­ten rules on han­dling eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tions. Six men have been exon­er­at­ed in Georgia after DNA evi­dence proved their inno­cence and ​“every sin­gle one…

State Legislators Advance Bills to Ban Juvenile Death Penalty Just weeks after leg­is­la­tors in Wyoming and South Dakota passed leg­is­la­tion to ban the exe­cu­tion of juve­nile offend­ers, law­mak­ers in Florida are on a sim­i­lar course that may send a bill that elim­i­nates the death penal­ty for those under the age of 18 to Governor Jeb Bush for sig­na­ture into law. Members of the Florida Senate passed the juve­nile death penal­ty ban by a vote of 26 – 12, and the House is…

Passed a bill in July 2002, exempt­ing the men­tal­ly retard­ed from the death penal­ty in which retar­da­tion, described as ​“sig­nif­i­cant­ly sub­av­er­age gen­er­al intel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing,” will be deter­mined before the tri­al. For more infor­ma­tion regard­ing this leg­is­la­tion, Click Here. On January 24, 2001, (SJR 3) a Joint Resolution, spon­sored by Sen. Simpson, was sub­mit­ted by the Delaware State Senate and the House of Representatives to estab­lish an independent,…

Connecticut Lags Behind in Death Penalty Reforms The Chair of Connecticut’s Judiciary Committee has called for enact­ment of death penal­ty reforms to pro­tect against wrong­ful con­vic­tions. Of the six reforms rec­om­mend­ed after a 13-month spe­cial com­mis­sion on Connecticut’s death penal­ty, only one has been enact­ed. Members of the com­mis­sion not­ed, ​“Experiences in oth­er states through­out the coun­try sug­gest that Connecticut can­not be com­pla­cent and ​‘best…

Colorado House Committee Advances Bill to Abolish Capital Punishment The House Judiciary Committee recent­ly vot­ed to abol­ish the state’s death penal­ty, replac­ing it with a sen­tence of life-with­out-parole, and use the mon­ey cur­rent­ly spent on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to help solve 1,200 cold-case homi­cides in the state. The 7 – 4 vote fol­lowed four hours of tes­ti­mo­ny from mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers, state law enforce­ment offi­cials, and death penal­ty experts, includ­ing DPIC Executive Director…

Court Rules California’s New Lethal Injection Procedures are Invalid Superior Court Judge Lynn O’Malley Taylor held that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation failed to fol­low prop­er pro­ce­dure for insti­tut­ing new reg­u­la­tions when it issued new lethal injec­tion pro­to­cols in May. Under state law, an agency that adopts new reg­u­la­tions must first pub­lish the text, invite pub­lic com­ments, hold a hear­ing if a mem­ber of the pub­lic requests one, and sub­mit the…

In April 2001, Governor Huckabee signed a law pro­vid­ing for Defense Counsel Standards and DNA…

The ban on exe­cut­ing the men­tal­ly retard­ed was signed into law ear­li­er this year, and Napolitano said she backed most of the oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions, say­ing, ​“If the state wants to con­tin­ue to have the death penal­ty, they bet­ter fund some of these things.” Read the report. (Associated Press,…

On May 20, 2001, Governor Siegelman signed a law cre­at­ing the Committee on Compensation for Wrongful Incarceration allow­ing repa­ra­tions to be made in the event that an inno­cent per­son is con­vict­ed and imprisoned…

On Tuesday, Dec. 4, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear argu­ments in Snyder v. Louisiana, a case involv­ing a black defen­dant sen­tenced to death by an all-white jury after the pros­e­cu­tion used its peremp­to­ry strikes to exclude all of the qual­i­fied black jurors. During Allen Snyder’s 1996 tri­al for the mur­der of a man his estranged wife was dat­ing, pros­e­cu­tor James Williams of Jefferson Parish urged the all-white jury to sen­tence the defen­dant to death so that Snyder would not ​“get away with it”…