Publications & Testimony

In ​“Dead Wrong: Violence, Vengeance, and the Victims of Capital Punishment,” author Richard Stack uses cas­es to exam­ine three of the main caus­es of wrong­ful con­vic­tions — mis­tak­en eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, offi­cial mis­con­duct, and incom­pe­tent coun­sel. Stack, a pro­fes­sor at American University’s School of Communication, based the book on three years of research con­duct­ed with the assis­tance of stu­dents enrolled in his pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion class­es. He said that he wrote the book to ​“put a human…

North Carolina​’s leg­is­la­ture recent­ly took an impor­tant step toward becom­ing the nation’s sec­ond state to pass a Racial Justice Act, leg­is­la­tion that gives defen­dants the oppor­tu­ni­ty to chal­lenge the death penal­ty based on stud­ies show­ing racial bias. The bill was quick­ly approved by mem­bers of the House Judiciary II Committee and will now go before the full House for con­sid­er­a­tion. The leg­is­la­tion is sim­i­lar to leg­is­la­tion enact­ed in Kentucky in 1998 and, accord­ing to the…

U.S. District Judge S. James Otero recent­ly halt­ed the penal­ty phase of a fed­er­al cap­i­tal case in Los Angeles and told pros­e­cu­tors that he believes the U.S. Justice Department should recon­sid­er its deci­sion to seek the death penal­ty for Petro ​“Peter” Krylov. Krylov is fac­ing the death penal­ty for his role in a kid­nap­ping and mur­der plot. Otero, the sec­ond fed­er­al judge this year to urge fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors and the Justice Department to rethink their deci­sion to seek a death sen­tence, told…

The Tennessee House Judiciary Committee unan­i­mous­ly approved a bill that would estab­lish a com­mis­sion to thor­ough­ly review the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem and pro­vide law­mak­ers with reform rec­om­men­da­tions that address any prob­lems iden­ti­fied by mem­bers of the com­mis­sion. The com­mis­sion would con­sist of rep­re­sen­ta­tives appoint­ed by Governor Phil Bredesen (pic­tured), the Senate, and the House, and would include pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, men­tal health advo­cates, and victims…

Amnesty International report­ed that exe­cu­tions world­wide fell by more than 25% last year, down from 2,148 in 2005 to 1,591 in 2006. Of all known exe­cu­tions that took place in 2006, 91% were car­ried out in six coun­tries, China (1,010), Iran (177), Pakistan (82), Iraq (65), Sudan (65), and the United States (53). Amnesty notes that exe­cu­tions in China are treat­ed as state secrets, and there may have been as many as 8,000 exe­cu­tions. Last year, the Philippines became the 99^th…

Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen (pic­tured) lift­ed the mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions that he imposed in February after accept­ing revised death penal­ty pro­to­cols sub­mit­ted by the Tennessee Department of Corrections just days before the next exe­cu­tion. Though the new pro­ce­dures include more detailed guide­lines for car­ry­ing out lethal injec­tions, the state will con­tin­ue to use a con­tro­ver­sial three-drug ​“cock­tail” and exclude doc­tors from par­tic­i­pat­ing, meau­res that some say risk severe and…

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Medellin v. Texas, a case that will deter­mine whether dozens of Mexican for­eign nation­als on death row in the U.S. are enti­tled to a new hear­ing because they were denied their right to seek con­sular assis­tance upon their arrest. The Bush admin­is­tra­tion and the Mexican gov­ern­ment both urged the Justices to take the case after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused to com­ply with President Bush’s order to state courts to review the cas­es of the 50…

The United States Supreme Court over­turned the death sen­tences of three Texas inmates in sep­a­rate 5 – 4 rul­ings today. In all three cas­es, the juries had been pre­vent­ed by the Texas statute (since changed) from ful­ly con­sid­er­ing the mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence pre­sent­ed by the defen­dants, evi­dence such as their low IQ or oth­er men­tal defi­cien­cies. In Smith v. Texas (No. 05 – 11304), the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had recon­sid­ered Smith’s death sen­tence after the case had been previously…

After spend­ing near­ly $700,000 on the con­struc­tion of a new death cham­ber at San Quentin prison, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has halt­ed the project due to con­cerns raised by leg­is­la­tors that they were not con­sult­ed about the plan. It was recent­ly revealed that state offi­cials had secret­ly begun build­ing the new death cham­ber and that cor­rec­tions offi­cials claimed they did not have to con­sult the leg­is­la­ture because the cost of the project would be $399,000, below the $400,000 threshold…