Publications & Testimony

Less than a month after the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed the July 17 exe­cu­tion of Troy Davis (pic­tured) based on con­cerns about his pos­si­ble inno­cence, the Georgia Supreme Court has agreed to con­sid­er Davis’s appeal. By a vote of 4 to 3, the Court agreed to hear oral argu­ments in the case and con­sid­er whether eye­wit­ness recan­ta­tions and oth­er evi­dence dis­cov­ered since Davis’s 1991 con­vic­tion and death sen­tence are suf­fi­cient grounds for…

A June 2007 Gallup Poll revealed that, dur­ing the past decade, there has been a sig­nif­i­cant drop in the per­cent­age of whites and blacks who sup­port cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Among black respon­dents, oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty has grown from 37% in the mid-1990s to a major­i­ty of 56% today. Responses giv­en by white respon­dents have also shift­ed dur­ing the past decade. In the mid-1990s, 80% of white respon­dents said that they favored the death penal­ty, but today that…

When weigh­ing whether to seek the death penal­ty, Tulsa County First Assistant District Attorney Doug Drummond says that he tries to deter­mine how future juries will assess the evi­dence, as well as how a death penal­ty case will impact vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers. He observes,​“Life with­out parole with­out appeals might be a bet­ter sit­u­a­tion for a lot of vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. There are some pos­i­tive things about that.… A lot of peo­ple, at first blush when a loved…

A new Ohio State University study has found that blacks con­vict­ed of killing whites are not only more like­ly than non-whites to receive a death sen­tence, but also more like­ly to be exe­cut­ed. Blacks on death row for killing non-whites are less like­ly to be exe­cut­ed than oth­ers on death row.​“Examining who sur­vives on death row is impor­tant because less than 10% of those giv­en the death sen­tence ever get exe­cut­ed,” said David Jacobs (pic­tured), co-author of the study…

Argued: April 18, 2007Decided: June…

On August 30, Texas has sched­uled the exe­cu­tion of Kenneth Foster Jr. (pic­tured), despite the fact that all par­ties agree that Foster did not per­son­al­ly kill any­one. Foster was sen­tenced to death under the Texas Law of Parties that per­mits a per­son involved in a crime to be held account­able for the actions com­mit­ted by some­one else. In this case, Texas main­tains that Foster deserves the death penal­ty because he​“should have antic­i­pat­ed” that a pas­sen­ger in his vehicle…

Billy Hill spent sev­en years as a dis­trict attor­ney in Shelby, Coosa, and Clay coun­ties in Alabama, and has recon­sid­ered his stance on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Mr. Hill says that he would wel­come a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in Alabama while a study com­mis­sion exam­ines the state’s death penal­ty to eval­u­ate whether it is​“a wise and humane use of our resources.” Wrongful con­vic­tions, the arbi­trary nature of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, poor…

“Dead Innocent: The Death Penalty Abolitionist Search for a Wrongful Execution” by Professor Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier was recent­ly pub­lished in the Tulsa Law Review. The arti­cle exam­ines the poten­tial impact that the con­firmed exe­cu­tion of an inno­cent per­son would have on the U.S. death penal­ty debate. The author states that iden­ti­fy­ing those who have been wrong­ly con­vict­ed and lat­er freed — as well as indi­vid­u­als who may have been inno­cent and exe­cut­ed — provides clear…

Judge Boyce F. Martin, Jr. (pic­tured) of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6^th Circuit called the death penal­ty​“arbi­trary, biased, and so fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed at its very core that it is beyond repair.” Judge Martin dis­sent­ed in the case of Getsy v. Mitchell and said it made no sense that Jason Getsy received a death sen­tence for his role in a mur­der-for-hire con­spir­a­cy, while the oth­er two trig­ger­men and the mas­ter­mind of the crime, all escaped a death sen­tence. He…

A fed­er­al judge ordered the U.S. gov­ern­ment to pay a record $102 mil­lion for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s role in the wrong­ful mur­der con­vic­tions of four men in 1968, includ­ing one man who was sen­tenced to death. U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner said the FBI’s con­duct was​“shock­ing” and char­ac­ter­ized the gov­ern­men­t’s expla­na­tion for the events lead­ing to the wrong­ful con­vic­tions of Louis Greco, Henry Tameleo, Peter Limone and Joseph Salvati as​“absurd.”…