Publications & Testimony

“The Death Penalty: America’s Experience with Capital Punishment” by Professors Raymond Paternoster, Robert Brame, and Sarah Bacon is a com­pre­hen­sive review of the death penal­ty in the U.S. Issues cov­ered include the his­to­ry of the death penal­ty in America and the chang­ing nature of the U.S. death penal­ty, includ­ing such top­ics as eli­gi­ble crimes, tri­al pro­ce­dures, and meth­ods of exe­cu­tion. In addi­tion, the book cov­ers ques­tions about the influ­ence of race on the death penal­ty, the execution…

The Justice Project has released two new pol­i­cy reviews about jail­house snitch tes­ti­mo­ny and expand­ed dis­cov­ery in crim­i­nal cas­es, both top­ics that are part of the orga­ni­za­tion’s broad­er National Agenda for Reform ini­tia­tive. Jailhouse Snitch Testimony: A Policy Review offers rec­om­men­da­tions and solu­tions for improv­ing the stan­dards of admis­si­bil­i­ty of in-cus­tody infor­mant or ​“snitch tes­ti­mo­ny.” The review includes an overview of cur­rent snitch tes­ti­mo­ny laws, case stud­ies, infor­ma­tion about…

Two exe­cu­tions sched­uled to take place on Thursday, September 27, in Alabama and Texas were stayed just two days after the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will con­sid­er the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Kentucky’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. In Alabama, Governor Bob Riley grant­ed Thomas Arthur a 45-day stay of exe­cu­tion to allow time for the state to change its cur­rent lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. The change is designed to address con­cerns that inmates are not ful­ly uncon­scious when given…

Italian Premier Romano Prodi called for a world­wide mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty in an address to world lead­ers at the United Nations General Assembly. Prodi advo­cat­ed pas­sage of a U.N. mora­to­ri­um res­o­lu­tion, say­ing, ​“If gen­uine pol­i­tics means show­ing fore­sight, we shall per­form a great polit­i­cal act through the adop­tion of this res­o­lu­tion. It will demon­strate that humankind isn’t capa­ble of mak­ing progress only in sci­ence but also in the field of ethics.” Prodi told the…

According to a new study released by the American Bar Association, Ohio’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem is so flawed that it should be sus­pend­ed while the state con­ducts a thor­ough review of its fair­ness and accu­ra­cy. The study, con­duct­ed by a 10-mem­ber pan­el of Ohio attor­neys appoint­ed by the ABA, found that the state’s death penal­ty is prone to racial and geo­graph­ic imbal­ances and that it meets only four of the 93 ABA rec­om­men­da­tions to ensure a fair capital…

In a case with broad nation­al impli­ca­tions, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to con­sid­er the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of lethal injec­tions as prac­ticed in Kentucky. The Justices will hear a chal­lenge filed by two Kentucky death row inmates, Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling, Jr. The two men sued Kentucky in 2004 claim­ing that the state’s lethal injec­tion process amounts to cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment, not­ing that the pro­ce­dure can inflict unnec­es­sary pain and suf­fer­ing on the…

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recent­ly com­plet­ed a com­pre­hen­sive study of Georgia’s use of the death penal­ty and found that ​“get­ting the death penal­ty in Georgia is as pre­dictable as a light­ning strike.” This was the same prob­lem that the U.S. Supreme Court iden­ti­fied in 1972 when it over­turned Georgia’s law and the laws of every oth­er death penal­ty state. Among the paper’s find­ings, which appear in a four-part series that began on Sept. 23, 2007, were: • Of Georgia’s 132 most…

In a let­ter cit­ing polit­i­cal manip­u­la­tion of the death penal­ty by the state’s chief pros­e­cu­tor, 41 mem­bers of Alabama’s District Attorneys Association called on Attorney General Troy King to apol­o­gize to Shelby County District Attorney Robby Owens (pic­tured). King has said that Owens ​“shirked” his duties when he expressed con­cerns in a court hear­ing about the fair­ness of an inmate’s death sen­tence. ​“If he can­not rec­og­nize the error of his need­less attack on the dis­trict attor­ney, per­haps he…

U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger has ruled that Tennessee’s new lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures are cru­el and unusu­al, a deci­sion that halts exe­cu­tions in the state. Trauger stat­ed that Tennessee’s new lethal injec­tion pro­to­cols, released in April 2007, present ​“a sub­stan­tial risk of unnec­es­sary pain” and vio­late death row inmate Edward Jerome Harbison’s con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions under the Eighth Amendment. She added that the pro­to­cols do not ade­quate­ly ensure that inmates are properly…

As Georgia law­mak­ers con­vene to review eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­ce­dures in the state, a new study by the Georgia Innocence Project has revealed that 83% of Georgia police agen­cies have no writ­ten rules on han­dling eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tions. Six men have been exon­er­at­ed in Georgia after DNA evi­dence proved their inno­cence and ​“every sin­gle one of those orig­i­nal con­vic­tions was based on faulty iden­ti­fi­ca­tions,” notes Representative Stephanie Stuckey Benfield, who chairs the study…