Publications & Testimony

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice exam­ined the state’s death penal­ty on January 10 in an effort to iden­ti­fy incon­sis­ten­cies in its appli­ca­tion and reforms for improv­ing the sys­tem. California has the largest death row in the coun­try and the back­log of cas­es has pre­sent­ed sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems in ensur­ing time­ly appeals and lim­it­ing costs. Legal experts sug­gest­ed that the state needs to nar­row its def­i­n­i­tion of what con­sti­tutes a cap­i­tal crime. The state now…

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch recent­ly revealed that a Missouri man who was entrust­ed with state and fed­er­al exe­cu­tions had a crim­i­nal past. The man, a licensed nurse who was called to Indiana in 2001 to assist in the fed­er­al exe­cu­tion of Timothy McVeigh, first need­ed per­mis­sion from his pro­ba­tion offi­cer before leav­ing the state. In 1998, the Missouri exe­cu­tion­er was charged with felony aggra­vat­ed stalk­ing and first-degree tam­per­ing with prop­er­ty of a man who was hav­ing a rela­tion­ship with the…

The Nevada Supreme Court recent­ly issued new stan­dards for indi­gent defense coun­sel, includ­ing spe­cial pro­vi­sions for cap­i­tal cas­es that address all facets of death penal­ty pro­ceed­ings, from the selec­tion of the pub­lic defend­ers to post-con­vic­tion appeals. Key stan­dards regard­ing death penal­ty cas­es from the 72-page document…

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Jan. 4 to review the case of a man in Louisiana who was sen­tenced to death for a crime in which the vic­tim, a child, did not die. Of the approx­i­mate­ly 3,350 peo­ple on death row in the U.S., only two inmates received the death penal­ty for a non-homi­cide crime. Patrick Kennedy was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 2004 for the rape of his 8‑year-old step­daugh­ter. He is chal­leng­ing his sen­tence as a vio­la­tion of the Eighth Amendment based…

A recent arti­cle in Time Magazine by Editor-at-large David Von Drehle exam­ines the cur­rent state of the death penal­ty in the United States at a time when the Supreme Court is con­sid­er­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the most wide­ly used method of exe­cu­tion – lethal injec­tion. Von Drehle writes, ​“In a per­fect world, per­haps, the gov­ern­ment would­n’t wait 30 years and sev­er­al hun­dred exe­cu­tions to deter­mine whether an exe­cu­tion method makes sense. But the world of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has never been…

UPDATE: Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio has grant­ed clemen­cy to John Spirko, reduc­ing his death sen­tence to a sen­tence of life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. The gov­er­nor cit­ed ​“the lack of phys­i­cal evi­dence link­ing him to the mur­der, as well as the slim resid­ual doubt about his respon­si­bil­i­ty for the mur­der that aris­es from care­ful scruti­ny of the case record” in his state­ment grant­i­ng the com­mu­ta­tion on Jan. 9. (Warrant of Commutation, Governor of Ohio, January 9, 2008).

Ronald Curtis Chambers, who was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death for the 1975 mur­der of Mike McMahan, may be giv­en a fourth tri­al fol­low­ing a rul­ing by the U.S. Supreme Court. Chambers was 20 at the time of his crime, and has been on death row longer than any oth­er inmate in Texas. His sec­ond tri­al came 10 years after his first, fol­low­ing a Texas court rul­ing that Chambers should have been told that infor­ma­tion from a psy­chi­atric con­sul­ta­tion could be used against him.

The United States Supreme Court will hear argu­ments on Monday, January 7, on whether or not the lethal injec­tion process in Kentucky is a vio­la­tion of the Constitution’s 8^th Amendment ban on cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ments. While the case, Baze v. Rees, has prompt­ed a de fac­to mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, it does not con­cern the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty itself. Currently, 35 of the 36 states with the death penal­ty use vari­a­tions of the same three-drug combination in…