Publications & Testimony

The Spring 2007 edi­tion of the American Bar Association​’s Human Rights quar­ter­ly fea­tures a series of arti­cles by out­stand­ing authors about the death penal­ty, includ­ing a 30-year ret­ro­spec­tive on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S. The arti­cles con­tained in the pub­li­ca­tion are: A Thirty-Year Retrospective of the Death Penalty By Stephen F. Hanlon Monitoring Death Sentencing Decisions: The Challenges and Barriers to Equity By Glenn L. Pierce and Michael L. Radelet Mental Disability and…

Funds for com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing pro­grams have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly slashed in recent years, a devel­op­ment that experts link to the gov­ern­men­t’s new focus on fight­ing ter­ror­ism. The U.S. Department of Justice pro­vid­ed $7 bil­lion in fed­er­al funds for com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing pro­grams between 1994 and 2001, but it has award­ed only $208 mil­lion for local depart­ments this year. ​“Many of those funds have been shift­ed to home­land secu­ri­ty, which also is very impor­tant in this day and age,” said University of…

The New York Court of Appeals ruled today (October 23, 2007) that the death sen­tence of the last remain­ing inmate on the state’s death row was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under state law. John Taylor​’s sen­tence will be changed to life in prison with­out parole. An ear­li­er deci­sion by the state’s high court in 2004 over­turned the state’s statute because of flaws in the jury instruc­tions. (People v. LaValle). Following hear­ings on the prob­lems with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state, the New…

Following the release of a new study pub­lished in the Journal of Adolescent Health con­cern­ing the fail­ure of deter­rence in drug use, med­ical experts com­ment­ed that deter­rence also fails in the area of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. ​“It is very clear that deter­rents are not effec­tive in the area of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment,” said Dr. Jonathan Groner, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of surgery at Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health who research­es the deter­rent effect of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. ​“The…

A for­mer Tennessee Attorney General, W.J. Cody, and a U.S. Court of Appeals Judge, Gilbert Merritt, both mem­bers of the American Bar Association’s Tennessee Death Penalty Assessment Team, called on pol­i­cy­mak­ers to thor­ough­ly review the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment laws and imple­ment sig­nif­i­cant changes that address con­cerns such as wrong­ful con­vic­tions, meet­ing the needs of vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers, and ensur­ing that the state com­plies with min­i­mum stan­dards required for fair­ness in capital…

A short­age of state funds to pay defense attor­neys, experts, and inves­ti­ga­tors has brought jury selec­tion in the tri­al of Brian Nichols in Georgia to a halt. Superior Court Judge Hilton M. Fuller (pic­tured), Jr. stopped jury selec­tion after just two days due to con­cerns that Nichols’ defense team did not have ade­quate fund­ing to rep­re­sent their client. His rul­ing came in response to a defense motion that not­ed, “[A]t this time, and for some peri­od of time in the past, no defense experts have…

With the stays of exe­cu­tion in Virginia on October 17 and in Georgia on October 18, it appears like­ly that no more lethal injec­tions will take place in this coun­try until the U.S. Supreme Court ren­ders a deci­sion in Baze v. Rees, a case chal­leng­ing the lethal injec­tion process in Kentucky. Christopher Emmett in Virginia was grant­ed a stay by the U.S. Supreme Court just hours before his exe­cu­tion. Jack Alderman’s lethal injec­tion was stayed by the Georgia Supreme Court a…

“Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir” by Stanley Tookie Williams is a first-hand account of Williams’ per­son­al jour­ney from co-found­ing the noto­ri­ous Crips gang to becom­ing a reformed pris­on­er and activist for youth from behind bars on California’s death row. The book, which has an epi­logue by Barbara Becnel and a fore­ward by Tavis Smiley, details how Williams became a pow­er­ful anti-gang activist dur­ing the two decades he spent on death row pri­or to his December 2005 execution.

The FBI’s recent­ly released Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the United States, 2006, revealed that the mur­der rate in 2006 rose slight­ly from 5.6 mur­ders per 100,000 peo­ple in 2005 to 5.7 in 2006, but was at the same rate as in 1999 when use of the death penal­ty start­ed to show marked declines. There has been lit­tle change in the mur­der rate in the inter­ven­ing years when death sen­tences, exe­cu­tions, and the size of death row all declined. As in pre­vi­ous years, the South had the highest…

According to a new report from a team of inves­ti­ga­tors spon­sored by the American Bar Association (ABA), flaws in Pennsylvania’s death penal­ty sys­tem are so per­va­sive that the state risks exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son. ​“The prob­lems found in this assess­ment strike at the very heart of Pennsylvania’s jus­tice sys­tem,” stat­ed ABA pres­i­dent-elect H. Thomas Wells, Jr. The five-mem­ber Pennsylvania assess­ment team that con­duct­ed the review urged a series of impor­tant death penal­ty reforms designed to…