Publications & Testimony

Acclaimed author John Grisham recent­ly told The Kansas City Star that the death penal­ty should be ​“abol­ished for­ev­er” in the United States. ​“I think the sys­tem is so bad­ly flawed that all exe­cu­tions should be stopped.… Let’s start with the basic con­cept of a fair tri­al. We are so far away from that in every state in this coun­try,” said Grisham, an attor­ney whose views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment start­ed to shift when he wrote ​“The Chamber,” a nov­el that deals with an…

Curtis Edward McCarty, who had been sen­tenced to die three times and has spent 21 years on Oklahoma​’s death row for a crime he did not com­mit, has been released after District Court Judge Twyla Mason Gray ordered that the charges against him be dis­missed. Gray ruled that the case against McCarty was taint­ed by the ques­tion­able tes­ti­mo­ny of for­mer police chemist Joyce Gilchrist, who gave improp­er expert tes­ti­mo­ny about semen and hair evi­dence dur­ing McCarty’s tri­al. Oklahoma…

The New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hear­ings on May 10, 2007, on leg­is­la­tion that would replace the state’s death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out parole. If passed, New Jersey would become the first state since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed to abol­ish the death penal­ty leg­isla­tive­ly. The bill stems from a January report issued by a spe­cial study com­mis­sion appoint­ed by the New Jersey leg­is­la­ture. The com­mis­sion’s report overwhelmingly…

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…