Publications & Testimony

In a case with broad nation­al impli­ca­tions, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to con­sid­er the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of lethal injec­tions as prac­ticed in Kentucky. The Justices will hear a chal­lenge filed by two Kentucky death row inmates, Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling, Jr. The two men sued Kentucky in 2004 claim­ing that the state’s lethal injec­tion process amounts to cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment, not­ing that the pro­ce­dure can inflict unnec­es­sary pain and suf­fer­ing on the…

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recent­ly com­plet­ed a com­pre­hen­sive study of Georgia’s use of the death penal­ty and found that ​“get­ting the death penal­ty in Georgia is as pre­dictable as a light­ning strike.” This was the same prob­lem that the U.S. Supreme Court iden­ti­fied in 1972 when it over­turned Georgia’s law and the laws of every oth­er death penal­ty state. Among the paper’s find­ings, which appear in a four-part series that began on Sept. 23, 2007, were: • Of Georgia’s 132 most…

In a let­ter cit­ing polit­i­cal manip­u­la­tion of the death penal­ty by the state’s chief pros­e­cu­tor, 41 mem­bers of Alabama’s District Attorneys Association called on Attorney General Troy King to apol­o­gize to Shelby County District Attorney Robby Owens (pic­tured). King has said that Owens ​“shirked” his duties when he expressed con­cerns in a court hear­ing about the fair­ness of an inmate’s death sen­tence. ​“If he can­not rec­og­nize the error of his need­less attack on the dis­trict attor­ney, perhaps he…

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 inmates are properly…

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 Stuckey Benfield, who chairs the study…

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 rep­re­sent­ed dur­ing his trial.

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 sen­tence reduced under the…

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 tri­als? Will it take…

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” war­rant­ed to pro­tect against wrongful…

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 penal­ty was reinstated in…