Publications & Testimony

In a recent arti­cle in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Dr. Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia University describes numer­ous seri­ous errors in recent deter­rence stud­ies, includ­ing improp­er sta­tis­ti­cal analy­ses and miss­ing data and vari­ables that are nec­es­sary to give a full pic­ture of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Fagan writes, ​“There is no reli­able, sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly sound evi­dence that [shows that exe­cu­tions] can exert a deter­rent effect…. These flaws and omis­sions in a body of scientific…

Norm Stamper, a 35-year vet­er­an police offi­cer from San Diego, recent­ly wrote in The Mercury News that from his expe­ri­ence, ​“the death penal­ty is inef­fi­cient and extrav­a­gant­ly expen­sive.” Instead of spend­ing mil­lions of dol­lars on the death penal­ty, Stamper writes, ​“Spending scarce pub­lic resources on after-school pro­grams, men­tal health care, drug and alco­hol treat­ment, edu­ca­tion, more crime labs and new tech­nolo­gies, or on hir­ing more police offi­cers, would tru­ly help create safer…

The jour­nal of Criminology & Public Policy recent­ly asked lead­ing experts to rec­om­mend impor­tant pol­i­cy changes need­ed in the area of crim­i­nal jus­tice and to pro­vide the evi­dence to sup­port such change. Although most of the arti­cles addressed var­i­ous prison and treat­ment issues, the first arti­cle by Prof. James Acker of the University at Albany called for an imme­di­ate mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. Prof. Acker exam­ines the United States’ long his­to­ry of grap­pling with the death penal­ty. He…

An inves­ti­ga­tion by The Washington Post and 60 Minutes has cast doubt on at least 250 crim­i­nal cas­es in which the defen­dant was con­vict­ed based on FBI bul­let-lead test evi­dence. Since the ear­ly 1960s, the FBI has used a tech­nique called com­par­a­tive bul­let-lead analy­sis on an esti­mat­ed 2,500 cas­es, many of which were homi­cide cas­es pros­e­cut­ed at state and local lev­els. Comparative bul­let-lead analy­sis, based on the assump­tion that all bul­lets in one batch will be chem­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar, examines…

Jim Willet, for­mer war­den of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Walls Unit where Texas exe­cu­tions take place, recent­ly described his expe­ri­ences to the Dallas Observer as emo­tion­al­ly dif­fi­cult for him. As war­den dur­ing 1998 – 2001, three of the busiest years for Texas’ death cham­ber, Willet over­saw 89 exe­cu­tions. ​“The first time is unbe­liev­able,” he told the Observer. ​“You have this healthy per­son – this per­son who was able to just jump up on the gur­ney – and you’ve said, ​‘Kill this…

In a recent inves­ti­ga­tion pub­lished in The Dallas Morning News, researchers found that 120 defen­dants con­vict­ed of mur­der in Texas between 2000 and 2006 received only a sen­tence of pro­ba­tion. In Dallas County, twice as many con­vict­ed mur­der­ers were sen­tenced to pro­ba­tion as were sent to death row. Typically in these cas­es, a defen­dant pleads guilty to mur­der, receives pro­ba­tion, and, with good behav­ior, can have the mur­der charged wiped from his or her record. The News began…

United Nations Calls for Moratorium on Executions A res­o­lu­tion for a glob­al mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions was passed on Nov. 15 by the UN General Assembly’s Third (Human Rights) Committee by a vote of 99 – 52, with 33 absten­tions. The General Assembly is expect­ed to endorse the deci­sion in a ple­nary ses­sion in December. Similar res­o­lu­tions were intro­duced in 1994 and 1999 but were either nar­row­ly defeat­ed or with­drawn. The res­o­lu­tions calls on countries…

After over an hour of debate, the Massachusetts House of Representatives over­whelm­ing­ly reject­ed an attempt to rein­state the death penal­ty. Prior to the 110 – 46 vote, Governor Deval Patrick had vowed to veto the bill if it were approved. The bill was sim­i­lar to one sub­mit­ted by for­mer Governor Mitt Romney as a ​“gold stan­dard” for cap­i­tal punishment.State Representatives cit­ed high costs and the pos­si­bil­i­ty for human error as rea­sons for reject­ing the bill. Rep. Sean F. Curran, D‑Springfield…

A recent Newsweek arti­cle by Evan Thomas and Martha Brant com­pares the his­tor­i­cal search for humane meth­ods of exe­cu­tion with the cur­rent decline in the use of the death penal­ty in the…

In addi­tion to the main brief sub­mit­ted by the Petitioner in Baze v. Rees, sev­er­al ami­cus curi­ae briefs have been filed in sup­port of the inmates from Kentucky who are chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of lethal injec­tions as prac­ticed in their state before the U.S. Supreme Court. The case is like­ly to be heard in January 2008 and decid­ed by June. It appears that exe­cu­tions around the coun­try have been put on hold pend­ing the Court’s deci­sion. The ami­cus (“friend of the court”) briefs…