Publications & Testimony

The July 2007 issue of Scientific American mag­a­zine con­tains both an arti­cle dis­cussing the med­ical impli­ca­tions of lethal injec­tion and an edi­to­r­i­al dis­cussing the humane­ness of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment gen­er­al­ly. The edi­to­r­i­al sug­gests that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ​“can nev­er be any­thing but inhu­mane,” and offers the opin­ion that it is ​“wrong” and an ​“out­rage.” But it fur­ther states that even those who believe the death penal­ty is accept­able, should agree that it not be car­ried out cru­el­ly. The…

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 28, 2007, that Scott Panetti, a man with severe men­tal ill­ness on Texas’s death row, deserves a rehear­ing on his claim of men­tal incom­pe­tence. The Court’s 5 – 4 rul­ing over­turned a deci­sion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that had used an over­ly restric­tive def­i­n­i­tion of what con­sti­tutes insan­i­ty. The low­er court had held that mere knowl­edge of one’s crime, with­out a ratio­nal under­stand­ing, was suf­fi­cient to allow an exe­cu­tion to go…

The fed­er­al death penal­ty impacts racial minori­ties dif­fer­ent­ly than it does whites accord­ing to a recent report from the American Civil Liberties Union. The report, The Persistent Problem of Racial Disparities in the Federal Death Penalty, notes that defen­dants of col­or make up the major­i­ty of the fed­er­al death row. And the risk of a case being autho­rized for the death penal­ty is 84% high­er in cas­es where the vic­tim is white, regard­less of the race of the defen­dant. The report point­ed to…

On June 25, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review a cap­i­tal case from Louisiana in which an all-white jury sen­tenced a defen­dant to death after the pros­e­cu­tor urged a death sen­tence so that the defen­dant would not ​“get away with it” like O.J. Simpson. All five qual­i­fied African-Americans had been struck from the jury pool by the pros­e­cu­tion using peremp­to­ry chal­lenges. The defense has chal­lenged the selec­tion of the jury as a vio­la­tion of equal pro­tec­tion. The…

Dissenting from a U.S. Court of Appeals deci­sion deny­ing relief to Gary Cone, Judge Merritt sharply crit­i­cized the Tennessee Attorney General for ​“fal­si­fi­ca­tion” of the record, and he referred to the state’s judi­cial sys­tem as ​“bro­ken” and ​“inat­ten­tive.” Cone had been grant­ed relief on two oth­er occa­sions by the same Sixth Circuit, but those deci­sions were reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court. In the present case, Cone claimed that sig­nif­i­cant mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence had been with­held by the state…

In the third edi­tion of what some have called ​“the first true text­book on the death penal­ty,” author Robert Bohm, a cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer turned col­lege pro­fes­sor, engages the read­er with a full account of the argu­ments and issues sur­round­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. His book, ​“DeathQuest III: An Introduction to the Theory & Practice of Capital Punishment in the United States,” begins with the his­to­ry of the death penal­ty from colo­nial to mod­ern times, and then exam­ines the moral and…

A recent study con­duct­ed by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has revealed that Texas is almost last among states in spend­ing on men­tal health ser­vices and per­forms poor­ly in oth­er men­tal health areas. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas ranked 47^th in the nation in per-capi­ta spend­ing on men­tal health ser­vices, and received a grade of ​“D” for infor­ma­tion access and a grade of ​“C”…

June 17, 2007 The Daily PilotMany aca­d­e­mics in recent years have been argu­ing that their stud­ies prove the death penal­ty deters mur­der. The var­i­ous stud­ies show that between 3 and 18 lives could be saved by exe­cut­ing a con­vict­ed killer. Critics ques­tion the data, say­ing that the experts made mis­takes in their method­ol­o­gy. What do you think of this recent data? Has it affect­ed your posi­tion on the issue? Judaism has always believed in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment based upon Biblical Law. A man must…