Publications & Testimony

Just two days after Tennessee’s first elec­tro­cu­tion in near­ly 50 years, Governor Phil Bredesen (pic­tured) com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of Michael Joe Boyd to life in prison with­out parole. The Governor called the rep­re­sen­ta­tion Boyd received dur­ing his appeals ​“gross­ly inad­e­quate,” adding that Boyd’s claims were nev­er com­pre­hen­sive­ly reviewed because his appel­late attor­ney — Dan Seward — failed to pro­vide evi­dence to sup­port Boyd’s ini­tial claim that he was poor­ly rep­re­sent­ed dur­ing his trial.

Alabama Attorney General Troy King (pic­tured) recent­ly stripped a cap­i­tal mur­der case from vet­er­an Shelby County District Attorney Robby Owens because Owens expressed con­cerns in a court hear­ing about the fair­ness of an inmate’s death sen­tence. Owens tes­ti­fied that it would be dis­pro­por­tion­ate to exe­cute LaSamuel Gamble for killing two peo­ple more than a decade ago in light of the fact that his co-defen­dant, and the crime’s trig­ger­man, Marcus Presley, had his death sen­tence reduced under the…

Florida State Attorney Harry Shorstein recent­ly said that cuts to his bud­get could force his staff to make tough deci­sions with regard to crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions. Shorstein said a pre­dict­ed bud­get cut for the 20 state attor­ney offices in Florida would be ​“cat­a­stroph­ic,” pro­ject­ing that his staff alone would lose 16 mem­bers and may have to aban­don expen­sive death penal­ty cas­es. ​“There will be cas­es that can’t be tried. Will it mean we can’t get to the tri­als? Will it take…

The Witchita Eagle recent­ly called on Kansas law­mak­ers to recon­sid­er the death penal­ty, stat­ing: ​“At some point, giv­en the legal prob­lems and the lack of exe­cu­tions, a death penal­ty stops mak­ing sense for Kansas.” The paper said the law has cost tax­pay­ers mil­lions of dol­lars with­out the ben­e­fit of deter­ring crime. Moreover, the state has not had a sin­gle exe­cu­tion since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed in 1994, and the ​“care and cau­tion” war­rant­ed to pro­tect against wrongful…

Attorneys for Patrick Kennedy, the only per­son on death row in the U.S. for a non-homi­cide offense, have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review whether a death sen­tence for a crime where the vic­tim was not mur­dered is con­sti­tu­tion­al. Kennedy was con­vict­ed of rap­ing his 8‑year-old step-daugh­ter in Louisiana in 1998. Only a hand­ful of states have laws that would allow a death sen­tence for such a crime. No one has been exe­cut­ed for a non-homi­cide offense since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in…

Critical devel­op­ments in the mod­ern his­to­ry of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States are exam­ined through a bio­graph­i­cal sketch of Anthony Amsterdam (pic­tured), one of the nation’s most respect­ed death penal­ty attor­neys and legal schol­ars, in the lat­est edi­tion of New York University’s Law School Magazine. Prof. Amsterdam argued Furman v. Georgia before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, result­ing in the over­turn­ing of all death penal­ty laws and the spar­ing of over 600 inmates on death row.

A Texas judge blocked the destruc­tion of DNA evi­dence that could prove the inno­cence of a man who was exe­cut­ed in 2000. A joint motion filed by a coali­tion of con­cerned groups sought DNA test­ing on a hair tak­en from the crime scene in the case of Claude Jones. In addi­tion, the groups asked the court to impose a restrain­ing order to pre­vent Texas from destroy­ing the evi­dence while the court con­sid­ers their request for DNA test­ing. Judge Elizabeth Coker grant­ed the restrain­ing order request and…

Just two years after the cre­ation of the Georgia Office of the Capital Defender, which suc­cess­ful­ly defend­ed 30 death penal­ty cas­es in 2006 with­out a sin­gle client being sen­tenced to death, state bud­get cuts have left the attor­neys with less than half the resources need­ed to car­ry out their cur­rent case load. The office has been asked to over­see the defense of 80 clients this year, includ­ing Brian Nichols, who faces the death penal­ty for a high­ly pub­li­cized 2005 Fulton County courthouse…

PBS Broadcasting will explore the prob­lem of inad­e­quate rep­re­se­n­a­tion in death penal­ty cas­es in ​“Death Is Different” on September 7^th as part of the inves­tiga­tive pro­gram EXPOSÉ. The show focus­es on Stephen Henderson’s (pic­tured) exam­i­na­tion of the qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in 80 death penal­ty cas­es in 4 states. Henderson, a McClatchy News reporter and author of an award-win­ning series enti­tled ​“No Defense: Shortcut to Death Row,” found that poor­ly-fund­ed defense lawyers are often failing…

China report­ed that the num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death in 2006 was the low­est in near­ly a decade, and offi­cials project that this trend will con­tin­ue in 2007. According to a state media report, dur­ing the first five months of 2007, the num­ber of death sen­tences hand­ed out in cas­es of first instance dropped approx­i­mate­ly 10% from the same time in 2006. The decline stems from a key legal reform requir­ing that all death sen­tences be approved by the Supreme People’s Court, a change made in…