Publications & Testimony

UPDATE: After less than one hour of delib­er­a­tion, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles grant­ed Troy Anthony Davis a 90-day stay of exe­cu­tion. The stay means Davis’ exe­cu­tion will be on hold while the board weighs the evi­dence pre­sent­ed as part of his request for clemen­cy. (Associated Press, July 16,…

On July 11, South Dakota car­ried out its first exe­cu­tion in 60 years, mark­ing only the 15^th time the state has car­ried out a death sen­tence since 1877. The state exe­cut­ed 25-year-old Elijah Page after he dropped all appeals and vol­un­teered to die by lethal injec­tion. Page was only 18 at the time of his crime and had a long his­to­ry of being abused. During his tri­al, the pre­sid­ing judge not­ed, ​“Most par­ents treat­ed their pets bet­ter than your par­ents treat­ed you.” Page’s decision…

A new book by Charles D. Flores details his per­son­al expe­ri­ence as an inmate on Texas’ death row. The book, Warrior Within: Inside Report on Texas Death Row, pro­vides a first-hand account of Flores’ death penal­ty tri­al and his expe­ri­ences await­ing exe­cu­tion. It explores his quest to learn more about the law as he fights to prove his inno­cence and win his free­dom. In the book, Flores writes, ​“I start­ed to com­pre­hend what it meant to be on death row. I was begin­ning to under­stand it was…

Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed recent­ly issued a report find­ing that Ruben Cantu (pic­tured) was guilty of the crime for which Texas exe­cut­ed him in 1993. However, crit­ics have not­ed that Reed was for­mer­ly a judge who han­dled Cantu’s appeal and set his exe­cu­tion date, rais­ing a con­flict of inter­est in con­duc­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion of his guilt. Moreover, many who are famil­iar with the case doubt Reed’s con­clu­sions and say the report’s find­ings do not add up. Critics of Reed’s report…

A new report from the Charlotte School of Law on men­tal ill­ness and the death penal­ty reveals that obsta­cles entrenched with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem impede efforts to iden­ti­fy those with severe men­tal ill­ness and treat them fair­ly. The report, ​“Mental Illness and the Death Penalty in North Carolina: A Diagnostic Approach,” is based on a 2006 sym­po­sium host­ed by the law school. It exam­ines sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies of men­tal ill­ness and pro­vides an overview of laws estab­lished to pro­tect those…

Since 2000, 50 peo­ple have had their death sen­tences reversed in Pennsylvania as courts found seri­ous legal errors in the inmates’ orig­i­nal tri­als. The num­ber of rever­sals near­ly equaled the num­ber of peo­ple added to the state’s death row dur­ing the past 7 years and have come from a vari­ety of courts. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued about 20% of the rever­sals, 50% of the death sen­tences were over­turned by state tri­al judges dur­ing the next stage of review, and anoth­er 30% of the…

Despite seri­ous doubts that he mur­dered off-duty police offi­cer Mark Allen MacPhail in 1989, Troy Davis is fac­ing exe­cu­tion in Georgia on July 17. Davis was con­vict­ed main­ly on the basis of eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny. Since then, sev­en of the nine key wit­ness­es against him have recant­ed or changed their state­ments. Three of those wit­ness­es have filed sworn state­ments alleg­ing that Sylvester ​“Red” Coles, anoth­er key pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness, had con­fessed to killing MacPhail. Davis’ defense attorneys…

According to a new report released by the Tennessee Justice Project, indi­gent defense attor­neys in the state receive far few­er dol­lars and ​“in-kind” resources than pros­e­cu­tors. This dis­crep­an­cy cre­ates an uneven play­ing field that under­mines the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The report, Resources of the Prosecution and Indigent Defense Functions in Tennessee, is based on find­ings from a study con­duct­ed by The Spangenberg Group, one of the nation’s lead­ing experts on…

Eleven years after super­vis­ing his first exe­cu­tion as at the Florida State Prison at Starke, for­mer war­den Ron McAndrew is urg­ing an end to the death penal­ty. McAndrew is call­ing on states to aban­don cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and replace it with life with­out parole, a pun­ish­ment he notes is worse than the death penal­ty and pro­tects states from exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son. He observes, “(T)he most severe pun­ish­ment you could ever give any­one would be to lock them in a lit­tle cage made out of…

On June 9, 2007 the Death Penalty Information Center released its new report, ​“A Crisis of Confidence: Americans’ Doubts About the Death Penalty.” The report, based on results from DPIC’s nation­al pub­lic opin­ion poll, received exten­sive nation­al media cov­er­age in major papers and elec­tron­ic media. In addi­tion, the report was dis­cussed exten­sive­ly on more than 25 Internet blogs, includ­ing many online crim­i­nal jus­tice groups. Among the news orga­ni­za­tions that fea­tured this sto­ry were the…