Publications & Testimony

“Under Pain of Death,” a new exhi­bi­tion at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York City, explores the death penal­ty through var­i­ous forms of art, focus­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly on the human emo­tions involved. Beginning January 21, 2008, the exhi­bi­tion offers art instal­la­tions, film screen­ings, and lec­tures on a vari­ety of aspects of the death penal­ty. The Austrian Cultural Forum New York is locat­ed at: 11 E. 52^nd Street New York, NY 10022. (Press release, Austrian Cultural…

Two new books address the death penal­ty from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives: one ana­lyz­ing the future of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the oth­er, by Billy Neal Moore, relates the expe­ri­ence of being on death row. Alan Clarke and Laurelyn Whitt exam­ine two fac­tors that are gain­ing impor­tance in the debate over cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The Bitter Fruit of American Justice (Northeastern 2007) con­tends that increas­ing oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty through­out the world could affect how…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

In The Top Ten Death Penalty Myths, pro­fes­sors Rudolph J. Gerber and John M. Johnson explore ten argu­ments used to sup­port the death penal­ty and pro­vide read­ers with cur­rent research and stud­ies chal­leng­ing these argu­ments. The authors show how​“polit­i­cal and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers have used myth and emo­tion­al appeals to mis­rep­re­sent the facts about cap­i­tal exe­cu­tions.” Each chap­ter begins with a state­ment in sup­port of the death penal­ty based on themes such as…