Publications & Testimony

The U.S. gov­ern­ment has decid­ed to seek the death penal­ty against six Guantánamo detainees who are accused of hav­ing cen­tral roles in the ter­ror­ist attacks of September 11, 2001. The defen­dants will be tried before Military Commissions, which are nei­ther part of the fed­er­al crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem nor the mil­i­tary’s jus­tice sys­tem for its own mem­bers. The laws and pro­ce­dures under the Military Commission Act of 2006 have not been test­ed and had to be…

Days after the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the elec­tric chair was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, a Lincoln Journal Star edi­to­r­i­al urged the state to recon­sid­er the death penal­ty:​“Instead of rush­ing to pass a new means of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the Legislature should take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to final­ly get rid of the death penal­ty.” Nebraska was the only state to retain the elec­tric chair as its sole means of exe­cu­tion. The paper not­ed that it was the right time to take…

National Public Radio (NPR) recent­ly fea­tured a seg­ment in its StoryCorps series in which a father describes how he came to for­give the man who mur­dered his daugh­ter. Patricia Nuckles was mur­dered by Ivan Simpson in 2001 when she caught him rob­bing her home. Though dev­as­tat­ed by his daughter’s mur­der, Hector Black want­ed to learn more about his daughter’s killer. He learned that Simpson was born in a men­tal hos­pi­tal to a woman who later…

Nebraska Supreme Court Rules Electrocution Unconstitutional The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled on February 8, 2008, that elec­tro­cu­tion is cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment under the state’s con­sti­tu­tion, out­law­ing the elec­tric chair in the only state that still used it as its sole…

Kennedy Brewer, who spent almost 15 years on Mississippi’s death row for the 1992 mur­der and rape of his girlfriend’s 3‑year-old daugh­ter, has been exon­er­at­ed of the charges, and anoth­er man, Justin Johnson, has been arrest­ed for the same crime. A 2001 inves­ti­ga­tion by the Innocence Project found that the semen on the victim’s body did not match Brewer’s DNA, but did match Johnson’s. Johnson was a sus­pect ear­ly in the case, and his blood was col­lect­ed and preserved in…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) recent­ly ordered relief for two death row inmates, acknowl­edg­ing that a U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing from last year affect­ed a series of cas­es that were tried before the state changed its death penal­ty statute. The Texas CCA reversed the death sen­tence of Jose Angel Moreno, whose exe­cu­tion was stayed just hours before it was to occur last May. He may now have a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to present a range of…

In a recent edi­to­r­i­al, the Concord Monitor advo­cat­ed against expand­ing New Hampshire’s death penal­ty law to include mul­ti­­ple-mur­der offens­es, as some law­mak­ers have pro­posed. Instead, they say,​“the death penal­ty should be elim­i­nat­ed, not expand­ed.” The edi­to­r­i­al cites prob­lems in the death penal­ty process, such as wrong­ful con­vic­tions, high costs, and its arbi­trari­ness, as rea­sons for abo­li­tion. The Monitor also writes that the death…

The cap­i­tal mur­der pros­e­cu­tion of Michael Addison in New Hampshire will cost the state at least $978,000 in its first stage. Attorney General Kelly A. Ayotte esti­mates that there are about eight lawyers work­ing on Addison’s case from her office. The state has been allo­cat­ed $420,000 for the four new staff mem­bers along with oth­er office costs, to pros­e­cute Addison. The $420,000 does not include the costs of salaried state pros­e­cu­tors who are help­ing to prepare the…

In a recent speech at the American University school of law, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who presided over the tri­al of 9/​11 con­spir­a­tor Zacarias Moussaoui, said that the government’s deci­sion to seek the death penal­ty against Moussaoui appeared to be polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed. Judge Brinkema also stat­ed that because Moussaoui’s case involved the death penal­ty, it unnec­es­sar­i­ly exposed clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion and inter­fered with the…

The Florida Supreme Court reduced the death sen­tence for Ryan Green to life with­out parole because he suf­fered from schiz­o­phre­nia and was not able to ful­ly appre­ci­ate the con­se­quences of his actions. Green was sen­tenced to death in 2006 for the mur­der of a retired Pensacola police sergeant. The jury that con­sid­ered his case vot­ed 10 – 2 for death. The pre­sid­ing judge, who makes the sen­tenc­ing deci­sion in Florida, imposed a death sen­tence despite his…