Publications & Testimony

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…

The Texas Department of Public Safety recent­ly hired Vanessa Nelson despite her being under inves­ti­ga­tion at the Houston Police Department Crime Lab where she was the for­mer DNA super­vi­sor. Nelson resigned from the Houston Lab to avoid being fired for giv­ing her sub­or­di­nates the answers to a DNA skills pro­fi­cien­cy test. The Houston Lab has a his­to­ry of prob­lems with its DNA lab, includ­ing poor train­ing and inad­e­quate work, caus­ing the divi­sion to be shut down in…

Maryland Judge Joseph P. Manck sought to lessen the pain and frus­tra­tion to the vic­tims’ fam­i­ly by sen­tenc­ing a defen­dant to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole instead of the death penal­ty. In choos­ing a life sen­tence for Brandon Morris for the mur­der of cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer Jeffrey Wroten, Judge Manck not­ed that appeals in death penal­ty cas­es can stretch on for years. He cit­ed one case that has been going on for 25 years and said that…

In a recent op-ed, Stephen Bright, pres­i­dent of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, wrote that Georgia is fail­ing to pro­vide defense for poor peo­ple accused of crimes in a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly respon­si­ble man­ner. According to Bright (pic­tured), today there is no mon­ey to pay for the defense in cap­i­tal cas­es, while dis­trict attor­neys con­tin­ue to have a vir­tu­al blank check to pros­e­cute them Georgia’s fail­ure to pay defense lawyers has caused many of them to…

Alton Logan was sen­tenced to life in prison for the 1982 mur­der of a secu­ri­ty guard in a McDonald’s restau­rant in Illinois. The state had orig­i­nal­ly sought the death penal­ty. New infor­ma­tion in the form of a con­fes­sion has now come for­ward from an attor­ney in anoth­er case indi­cat­ing that Logan may not be guilty of the crime. Soon after the restau­rant mur­der, two Chicago police offi­cers were shot to death, and a man named Andrew Wilson was charged with their murder.

At recent Congressional hear­ings, mem­bers of the Senate Judiciary Committee ques­tioned the Department of Justice as to why it has not approved any grants under the Kirk Bloodsworth DNA Post-Conviction Testing Program. Part of the Innocence Protection Act of 2004, the pur­pose of the pro­gram was to help defray DNA test­ing costs through grants to indi­vid­ual states. It has had con­gres­sion­al fund­ing of almost $14 mil­lion over the past three years, but has failed to dole out any of the…

The Inter Press Service, with the assis­tance of the European Commission, has recent­ly pub­lished​“Crime and Justice: Abolishing the Death Penalty,” col­lect­ing more than 100 reports from dozens of coun­tries and every con­ti­nent. IPS used the voic­es of those who work direct­ly with the death penal­ty issue to present a world-wide pic­ture of the sta­tus of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The sto­ries told in the report are from activists, aca­d­e­mics, lawyers and death row inmates. They range…

The Richmond Times-Dispatch, a key paper in the Virginia state cap­i­tal, has long sup­port­ed the death penal­ty. But their recent edi­to­r­i­al takes the posi­tion that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment​“achieves no legit­i­mate goals that can­not be achieved by a life sen­tence with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.” The paper equates the death penal­ty with the state​“play­ing God.” The full text of the edi­to­r­i­al fol­lows: Del. Frank Hargrove, one of the General Assembly’s Don Quixotes, hopes the…

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch recent­ly uncov­ered hos­pi­tal files indi­cat­ing that Dr. Alan R. Doerhoff, a Missouri physi­cian who assist­ed with the state’s exe­cu­tions and who devel­oped the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col, gave mis­lead­ing answers dur­ing a 1999 mal­prac­tice suit about hav­ing his hos­pi­tal priv­i­leges revoked. In 1998, Doerhoff’s med­ical priv­i­leges were revoked from the Lake of the Ozarks General Hospital. Doerhoff was also denied priv­i­leges at St. Mary’s…

In an op-ed in the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram, police chief James Abbott stat­ed that the death penal­ty is bro­ken beyond repair and that the extra mon­ey spent pur­su­ing exe­cu­tions could be bet­ter spent on crime pre­ven­tion and the needs of vic­tims. Abbott is the Police Chief of West Orange, New Jersey, and he served on the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission. He was a long­time sup­port­er of the death penal­ty but even­tu­al­ly con­clud­ed that abo­li­tion was​“just plain…