Publications & Testimony

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…

University of Tennessee law pro­fes­sor Penny White exam­ines how two recent Supreme Court rul­ings should impact a cap­i­tal defen­dan­t’s right to con­front wit­ness­es dur­ing the sen­tenc­ing phase of his death penal­ty tri­al. Prof. White argues that a defen­dan­t’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to con­front actu­al wit­ness­es tes­ti­fy­ing against him dur­ing the guilt phase of his tri­al (rather than hav­ing such evi­dence admit­ted through hearsay or oth­er non-first per­son evi­dence), should be extend­ed to capital…

The Dallas Morning News called the death penal­ty ​“the great­est moral chal­lenge fac­ing law­mak­ers today.” In an edi­to­r­i­al address­ing con­cerns about Texas’ cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem, the paper not­ed the ​“dis­tinct and unac­cept­able pos­si­bil­i­ty of dead­ly error,” and called on law­mak­ers to impose a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions while the sys­tem is stud­ied. The edi­to­r­i­al made sev­er­al sug­ges­tions as part of a ​“fresh look” at the death penal­ty, includ­ing the for­ma­tion of an inno­cence com­mis­sion, the…

Arthur L. Alarcon, a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit in Los Angeles, sharply crit­i­cized California’s death penal­ty sys­tem and chid­ed law­mak­ers for fail­ing to pro­vide ade­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion and fund­ing for cap­i­tal cas­es. Judge Alarcon, a death penal­ty sup­port­er, wrote an arti­cle in the Southern California Law Review enti­tled ​“Remedies for California’s Death Row Deadlock” warn­ing that fail­ure to address California’s capital…

Just hours before tonight’s (August 30) sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Kenneth Foster, Governor Rick Perry (pic­tured) has accept­ed a Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rec­om­men­da­tion to stop Foster’s exe­cu­tion and com­mute his sen­tence to life. Perry was not oblig­at­ed to accept the high­ly unusu­al 6 – 1 rec­om­men­da­tion from the board whose mem­bers he appoints. The com­mu­ta­tion is the first of its kind in his eight years in office. The board deci­sion was announced about sev­en hours before Foster was…

Nearly five decades after Steven Truscott (pic­tured) was sen­tenced to die for the mur­der of 12-year-old Lynne Harper in Clinton, Ontario, he has been acquit­ted by the Canadian province’s high­est court. Truscott, who was only 14-years-old when he was sen­tenced to hang in 1959, was on death row for four months before his sen­tence was com­mut­ed to life in prison. The case was one of the most high pro­file cas­es in Canada’s his­to­ry, and Truscott was the youngest per­son on death row. Two attempts to…

North Carolina dropped all charges against Dwayne Allen Dail (pic­tured), who spent near­ly half his life in prison for a rape he did not com­mit. Dail, now 39, was sen­tenced to two life sen­tences plus 18 years in 1989. He has always main­tained his inno­cence, but was con­vict­ed after the 12-year-old vic­tim iden­ti­fied him as her assailant and the state claimed that hair found at the crime scene was micro­scop­i­cal­ly con­sis­tent with his. Standard pro­to­col would have ordered the…

A new study led by Vanderbilt University law pro­fes­sor Nancy King has revealed that few­er con­vic­tions have been over­turned since the 1996 enact­ment of the Anti-ter­ror­ism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). The 2‑year study was the first to exam­ine the effects of AEDPA. It exam­ined 2,400 non-cap­i­tal cas­es that were ran­dom­ly select­ed from among the more than 36,000 habeas cas­es filed in fed­er­al dis­trict court nation­wide by state pris­on­ers dur­ing 2003 and 2004, as well as more than 360…

In Florida, doc­tors hired to mon­i­tor and par­tic­i­pate in lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions wear pur­ple ​“moon suits” and gog­gles to con­ceal their iden­ti­ties from wit­ness­es and cir­cum­vent an American Medical Association (AMA) code that for­bids par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­tions, accord­ing to the Associated Press. Though Florida and oth­er states say the par­tic­i­pa­tion of med­ical per­son­nel ensures ​“a dig­ni­fied and humane death” for those fac­ing exe­cu­tion, the AMA, the American Nurses Association, the American…

A new book by Bruce Watson exam­ines the case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immi­grants whose guilt remains in seri­ous doubt eight decades after Massachusetts car­ried out their death sen­tences. The book, ​“Sacco & Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind” (Viking, 2007), pro­vides a fac­tu­al account of the case sur­round­ing the two men, who were con­vict­ed of steal­ing a shoe fac­to­ry’s pay envelopes and killing four peo­ple in the crime. Watson’s…