Publications & Testimony

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…

Jerry Miller, a for­mer army cook who spent near­ly 25 years behind bars for a crime he did not com­mit, became the nation’s 200^th per­son freed from prison or death row through DNA test­ing. The first DNA exon­er­a­tion in the U.S. took place in 1989. Thirteen years lat­er, the num­ber of freed inmates reached 100, and just five years after that, it dou­bled. ​“Five years ago, peo­ple said that the num­ber (of exon­er­a­tions) was going to dry up because there just weren’t many wrongful convictions.

Members of an American Bar Association Assessment Team have urged Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen to extend the state’s cur­rent mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions so that a more thor­ough review of the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment laws can be con­duct­ed. The sev­en-mem­ber team also offered 14 rec­om­men­da­tions to address prob­lems iden­ti­fied dur­ing their review of Tennessee’s death penal­ty. Racial and geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties in cap­i­tal cas­es, poor­ly trained defense attor­neys, heavy caseloads for…

A new sci­en­tif­ic study of 41 lethal injec­tions that took place in California and North Carolina dur­ing the past two decades revealed that two of the three drugs used to car­ry out these exe­cu­tions are not admin­is­tered in a way that reli­ably pro­duces death in the way intend­ed. The study, pub­lished in the Public Library of Science Journal, PLoS Medicine, found that inmates were giv­en a uni­form amount of anes­the­sia (sodi­um thiopen­tal) regard­less of their body weight or other…

A Cincinnati Enquirer exam­i­na­tion of death penal­ty deci­sions issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6^th Circuit revealed that judges appear to con­sis­tent­ly vote along par­ty lines, there­by inject­ing arbi­trari­ness into death penal­ty rul­ings. The judges do most of their work as mem­bers of ran­dom­ly select­ed three-judge pan­els. Sixteen judges are eli­gi­ble to sit on those pan­els, includ­ing nine Republican appointees and sev­en Democratic appointees. This means life-and-death…

Three orga­ni­za­tions whose mem­ber­ships include fam­i­ly mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims recent­ly issued a joint state­ment in con­junc­tion with National Crime Victims’ Rights Week, which takes place April 22 — 28, 2007. The state­ment, issued by the lead­ers of Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation, and Journey of Hope, called for gov­ern­men­tal poli­cies that serve the true needs of fam­i­ly mem­bers. The groups called for an end to the death…

The California Supreme Court has unan­i­mous­ly ruled that a defen­dant may be spared the death penal­ty because he is men­tal­ly defi­cient in one area, even if his IQ score falls in the nor­mal range. The deci­sion gives judges broad­er dis­cre­tion to spare defen­dants from exe­cu­tion for rea­sons of men­tal impair­ment and clar­i­fies a 2005 rul­ing that allowed those on death row to chal­lenge their sen­tences on the grounds of men­tal retar­da­tion. The court ruled that tri­al courts may give…