Publications & Testimony

U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger has ruled that Tennessee’s new lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures are cru­el and unusu­al, a deci­sion that halts exe­cu­tions in the state. Trauger stat­ed that Tennessee’s new lethal injec­tion pro­to­cols, released in April 2007, present​“a sub­stan­tial risk of unnec­es­sary pain” and vio­late death row inmate Edward Jerome Harbison’s con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions under the Eighth Amendment. She added that the pro­to­cols do not ade­quate­ly ensure that…

As Georgia law­mak­ers con­vene to review eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­ce­dures in the state, a new study by the Georgia Innocence Project has revealed that 83% of Georgia police agen­cies have no writ­ten rules on han­dling eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tions. Six men have been exon­er­at­ed in Georgia after DNA evi­dence proved their inno­cence and​“every sin­gle one of those orig­i­nal con­vic­tions was based on faulty iden­ti­fi­ca­tions,” notes Representative Stephanie…

Just two days after Tennessee’s first elec­tro­cu­tion in near­ly 50 years, Governor Phil Bredesen (pic­tured) com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of Michael Joe Boyd to life in prison with­out parole. The Governor called the rep­re­sen­ta­tion Boyd received dur­ing his appeals​“gross­ly inad­e­quate,” adding that Boyd’s claims were nev­er com­pre­hen­sive­ly reviewed because his appel­late attor­ney — Dan Seward — failed to pro­vide evi­dence to sup­port Boyd’s ini­tial claim that he was poorly…

Alabama Attorney General Troy King (pic­tured) recent­ly stripped a cap­i­tal mur­der case from vet­er­an Shelby County District Attorney Robby Owens because Owens expressed con­cerns in a court hear­ing about the fair­ness of an inmate’s death sen­tence. Owens tes­ti­fied that it would be dis­pro­por­tion­ate to exe­cute LaSamuel Gamble for killing two peo­ple more than a decade ago in light of the fact that his co-defen­­dant, and the crime’s trig­ger­man, Marcus Presley, had his death…

Florida State Attorney Harry Shorstein recent­ly said that cuts to his bud­get could force his staff to make tough deci­sions with regard to crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions. Shorstein said a pre­dict­ed bud­get cut for the 20 state attor­ney offices in Florida would be​“cat­a­stroph­ic,” pro­ject­ing that his staff alone would lose 16 mem­bers and may have to aban­don expen­sive death penal­ty cas­es.​“There will be cas­es that can’t be tried. Will it mean we can’t get to the…

The Witchita Eagle recent­ly called on Kansas law­mak­ers to recon­sid­er the death penal­ty, stat­ing:​“At some point, giv­en the legal prob­lems and the lack of exe­cu­tions, a death penal­ty stops mak­ing sense for Kansas.” The paper said the law has cost tax­pay­ers mil­lions of dol­lars with­out the ben­e­fit of deter­ring crime. Moreover, the state has not had a sin­gle exe­cu­tion since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed in 1994, and the​“care and caution”…

Attorneys for Patrick Kennedy, the only per­son on death row in the U.S. for a non-homi­­cide offense, have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review whether a death sen­tence for a crime where the vic­tim was not mur­dered is con­sti­tu­tion­al. Kennedy was con­vict­ed of rap­ing his 8‑year-old step-daugh­­ter in Louisiana in 1998. Only a hand­ful of states have laws that would allow a death sen­tence for such a crime. No one has been exe­cut­ed for a non-homi­­cide offense since the death…

Critical devel­op­ments in the mod­ern his­to­ry of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States are exam­ined through a bio­graph­i­cal sketch of Anthony Amsterdam (pic­tured), one of the nation’s most respect­ed death penal­ty attor­neys and legal schol­ars, in the lat­est edi­tion of New York University’s Law School Magazine. Prof. Amsterdam argued Furman v. Georgia before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, result­ing in the over­turn­ing of all death penal­ty laws and the spar­ing of over 600…

A Texas judge blocked the destruc­tion of DNA evi­dence that could prove the inno­cence of a man who was exe­cut­ed in 2000. A joint motion filed by a coali­tion of con­cerned groups sought DNA test­ing on a hair tak­en from the crime scene in the case of Claude Jones. In addi­tion, the groups asked the court to impose a restrain­ing order to pre­vent Texas from destroy­ing the evi­dence while the court con­sid­ers their request for DNA test­ing. Judge Elizabeth Coker granted the…

Just two years after the cre­ation of the Georgia Office of the Capital Defender, which suc­cess­ful­ly defend­ed 30 death penal­ty cas­es in 2006 with­out a sin­gle client being sen­tenced to death, state bud­get cuts have left the attor­neys with less than half the resources need­ed to car­ry out their cur­rent case load. The office has been asked to over­see the defense of 80 clients this year, includ­ing Brian Nichols, who faces the death penal­ty for a high­ly pub­li­cized 2005 Fulton…