Publications & Testimony

Two recent arti­cles in the Dallas Morning News detail the lives of those affect­ed by the wrong­ful impris­on­ment of Christopher Ochoa and Richard Danziger in Texas. For some, their faith in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem has been shat­tered. Twelve years after being sen­tenced to life in prison for a 1988 rape and mur­der, Ochoa and Danziger were exon­er­at­ed by DNA evi­dence. At the time of his arrest, Ochoa, after 15 hours of inter­ro­ga­tion, gave…

At a hear­ing of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice held in Los Angeles, the moth­er of a mur­der vic­tim tes­ti­fied about why she believed the death penal­ty does not serve vic­tims’ needs. Aba Gayle’s daugh­ter, Catherine Blount, was a teenag­er when she was mur­dered in 1980 by Douglas Mickey. At first, Gayle told the Commission,​“The dis­trict attor­ney assured me that the exe­cu­tion of the man respon­si­ble for Catherine’s murder would…

Author Gilbert King, in his forth­com­ing book The Execution of Willie Francis, details the sto­ry of a young African-American man who endured the elec­tric chair twice before being exe­cut­ed for the mur­der of a white man in Louisiana. In 1946, an all-white jury con­vict­ed Francis, who was 17, and sen­tenced him to death. The first attempt to exe­cute him by elec­tro­cu­tion did not work, and Francis was returned to his death row cell where he remained for almost another year…

The Georgia Senate Appropriations Committee cut the state pub­lic defend­er bud­get to $513,000, less than 15% of what Gov. Sonny Perdue had rec­om­mend­ed to cov­er costs until the end of June. The gov­er­nor had orig­i­nal­ly sought $3.6 mil­lion for the Public Defender Standards Council, which is now con­cerned that with­out nec­es­sary funds, the Georgia court sys­tem will come to a stand­still, includ­ing their defense in cap­i­tal cas­es. House Majority Leader Jerry Keen said that…

A recent poll by NationalChristianPoll​.com found that two-thirds of active Christians who oppose the death penal­ty are con­cerned about judi­cial error that could lead to an inno­cent per­son being exe­cut­ed. The poll also found that of Christians who do sup­port the death penal­ty, 60% do so because of bib­li­cal teach­ings. According to a Pew Forum poll from 2007, the strongest sup­port­ers of the death penal­ty are white evan­gel­i­cals, with 74% approval. However, John Whitehead,…

Supreme Court mulls lethal injec­tions as Christian sup­port for the death penal­ty drops. by Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra Christianity Today…

Victor Streib, who has been research­ing the sub­ject of women and the death penal­ty for 20 years, has released an updat­ed ver­sion of his report ​“Death Penalty for Female Offenders.” In his research, Prof. Streib, a pro­fes­sor at Elon University School of Law in North Carolina and Ohio Northern University’s Pettit College of Law, has found that women are sig­nif­i­cant­ly less like­ly than men to receive a death sen­tence, pos­si­bly because pros­e­cu­tors seem less…

The Death Penalty Information Center has con­duct­ed a sur­vey of death row pop­u­la­tions as report­ed by the var­i­ous state depart­ments of cor­rec­tion in January/​February 2008. From that sur­vey, the cur­rent death row pop­u­la­tion across the coun­try is 3,263. California con­tin­ues to have the high­est death row pop­u­la­tion with 669 inmates. Florida fol­lows with 388, and Texas has 370 inmates. A state-by-state break­down appears below. Except for Illinois and the federal…

A men­tal­ly retard­ed man in Texas accept­ed a life sen­tence for a mur­der that occurred over 28 years ago. Johnny Paul Penry was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death for the sex­u­al assault and mur­der of Pamela Mosley Carpenter, a rel­a­tive of a pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball star. Penry’s death sen­tence was over­turned twice by the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to the plea agree­ment on February 15, 2008, the pros­e­cu­tion was insist­ing on a fourth cap­i­tal sentencing hearing…

Judge Stephen Roth of Utah has decid­ed to force an unwill­ing attor­ney to han­dle the appeal of death-row inmate Ralph Leroy Menzies after no qual­i­fied lawyers were will­ing to take the assign­ment for the amount of pay offered.​“The court ulti­mate­ly con­cludes that it has the author­i­ty to appoint unwill­ing coun­sel to rep­re­sent the peti­tion­er here, but only if the attor­ney appoint­ed is justly…