Publications & Testimony

The FBI’s recent­ly released Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the United States, 2006, revealed that the mur­der rate in 2006 rose slight­ly from 5.6 mur­ders per 100,000 peo­ple in 2005 to 5.7 in 2006, but was at the same rate as in 1999 when use of the death penal­ty start­ed to show marked declines. There has been lit­tle change in the mur­der rate in the inter­ven­ing years when death sen­tences, exe­cu­tions, and the size of death row all declined. As in pre­vi­ous years, the South…

According to a new report from a team of inves­ti­ga­tors spon­sored by the American Bar Association (ABA), flaws in Pennsylvania’s death penal­ty sys­tem are so per­va­sive that the state risks exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son.​“The prob­lems found in this assess­ment strike at the very heart of Pennsylvania’s jus­tice sys­tem,” stat­ed ABA pres­i­­dent-elect H. Thomas Wells, Jr. The five-mem­ber Pennsylvania assess­ment team that con­duct­ed the review urged a series of important death…

Member nations of the European Union and the Council of Europe marked October 10^th as​“European Day Against the Death Penalty,” an action to under­score the con­ti­nen­t’s firm com­mit­ment to end­ing exe­cu­tions through­out the world. Leaders from the EU and the Council of Europe launched the ini­ta­tive dur­ing an October 9^th con­fer­ence in Lisbon, Portugal. On October 10 in New York at the United Nations, a press con­fer­ence also marked the​“World Day Against the Death Penalty” with…

MORE STAYS GRANTED On October 24, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion to Daniel Siebert, who was to be exe­cut­ed in Alabama on Oct. 25. On Oct. 22, the Georgia Supreme Court grant­ed anoth­er stay, this time to Curtis Osborne. These stays are relat­ed to the issue of lethal injec­tion as the U.S. Supreme Court con­sid­ers the mat­ter.​“A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH:” NEWS SERIES REVEALS ARBITRARY…

A new report released by Amnesty International, Execution by lethal injec­tion — a quar­ter cen­tu­ry of state poi­son­ing, calls on med­ical pro­fes­sion­als to refuse to par­tic­i­pate in exe­cu­tions and details ongo­ing con­cerns about cur­rent lethal injec­tion pro­to­cols that could result in inmates feel­ing excru­ci­at­ing pain dur­ing their exe­cu­tions.​“Governments are putting doc­tors and nurs­es in an impos­si­ble posi­tion by ask­ing them to do some­thing that goes against…

In a recent meet­ing with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board, Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst (pic­tured) urged leg­is­la­tors to re-exam­­ine the state law that allows an accom­plice to be tried by the same judge and jury as the shoot­er in mur­der cas­es, adding that he agreed with Governor Rick Perry’s deci­sion to com­mute Kenneth Eugene Foster’s death sen­tence to life in prison based on sim­i­lar con­cerns. Dewhurst also called on leg­is­la­tors to estab­lish a state…

A recent edi­tion of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review fea­tures arti­cles about the impact of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) in lim­it­ing appeals by pris­on­ers and death row inmates. AEDPA was enact­ed in 1996, and Harvard Law School spon­sored a sym­po­sium mark­ing the leg­is­la­tion’s tenth anniver­sary. One arti­cle by Bryan Stevenson, Director of the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative,​“Confronting Mass Imprisonment and Restoring…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion to Heliberto Chi, fol­low­ing the U.S. Supreme Court’s lead after it decid­ed to review Kentucky’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures. Chi was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on October 3. Attorneys for both the pros­e­cu­tion and defense said that the stay sig­nals a prob­a­ble slow­down, if not a com­plete shut­down, of exe­cu­tions in Texas until the Supreme Court issues a deci­sion in the lethal injec­tion case. Andrea Keilen,…

In an edi­to­r­i­al that fol­lowed a four-part news series review­ing death penal­­ty-eli­gi­ble mur­der cas­es in Georgia between 1995 and 2004, the Atlanta Journal Constitution called on the state to aban­don cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment because death sen­tences are often unfair­ly influ­enced by geog­ra­phy, a pros­e­cu­tor’s per­son­al pol­i­tics, or the vic­tim’s race. The paper also said that Georgia fails to meet min­i­mum stan­dards to ensure an accu­rate and fair capital punishment…

On October 10, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear argu­ments in Medellin v. Texas, a case that will deter­mine whether President Bush over­stepped his author­i­ty by order­ing state courts to com­ply with a 2004 International Court of Justice (ICJ) rul­ing. The case involves Texas death row inmate Jose Medellin, one of 51 Mexican for­eign nation­als who were denied their right to con­tact Mexican con­sular offi­cials after their arrest. The ICJ’s 2004 rul­ing called on U.S. courts to review the…