Publications & Testimony

The governor of Missouri, Matt Blunt, has proposed that his state expand the death penalty to include cases of sexual assault against children where the victim is not killed. However, according to an editorial in the Springfield News-Leader, such a law would not protect children. Instead, it could make it less likely that these offenses would be reported, would put the child in danger of even worse crimes, and would involve the child and the family in years of death penalty litigation. The…

Rudolph J. Gerber served as a prosecutor and as a judge on Arizona’s Court of Appeals for 13 years. Earlier in his career, then-state senator Sandra Day O’Connor asked Mr. Gerber to draft the statute that eventually became Arizona’s death penalty law. In a recent op-ed in the Sacramento Bee, he expressed his concerns about the practice of capital punishment and said that states should use the present period in which no executions are occurring as an opportunity to re-examine their commitment to…

On April 16, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Kentucky’s three-drug protocol for carrying out lethal injections does not amount to cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. The case, Baze v. Rees, had resulted in executions being put on hold around the country from the day after the Court agreed to review the issue. Thirty-five of the 36 states with the death penalty and the federal government use lethal injection as their primary method of execution. Seven Justices wrote…

April 16, 2008 Opinion of the Chief Justice announcing the judgment of the Court “Some risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution — no matter how humane — if only from the prospect of error in following the required procedure. It is clear, then, that the Constitution does not demand the avoidance of all risk of pain in carrying out executions.” Concurring Opinion of Justice Alito “The issue presented in this case — the constitutionality of a method of execution — should be kept separate…

Amnesty International recently reported that at least 1,252 people were executed in 24 countries and at least 3,347 people were sentenced to death in over 50 countries in 2007. Amnesty estimates that there are up to 27,500 people on death row worldwide. Their figures represent a drop in executions from 1,591 in 2006, particularly in China which went from over 1,000 executions in 2006 to 470 last year. However, execution figures are considered a state secret in China and the actual number of…

The March 2008 issue of the Pierce Law Review explores many aspects of the death penalty through articles written by renowned death penalty scholars and attorneys. With a forward by Christopher M. Johnson, the Review examines the death penalty at individual, societal, and international levels. To coincide with the publication of this issue, the Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire held a panel discussion on the death penalty on April 15, 2008. The articles included in this special death…

The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) recently completed a study of the effect of executions on homicide rates and found that both states that execute many people and states that execute no one show the biggest decline in homicides (34% and 36% declines, respectively). States that execute few people have the least decline (24%) in homicides. According to the study, “This peculiar result suggests the death penalty is irrelevant to homicide.” The study looked at the effect of the…

On April 8, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on “The Adequacy of Representation in Capital Cases.” Sen. Russ Feingold (D‑WI) presided over the session of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, which heard testimony from a variety of experts including Michael Greco, former President of the American Bar Association, Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, the Honorable Carolyn Temin of the Court of Common Pleas in Pennsylvania, and Donald…

A forthcoming study to be published in the Fordham Urban Law Journal found that almost all states that use a paralyzing drug in the lethal injection of death row inmates forbid the use of this same drug in euthanizing animals. Ty Alper, the associate director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, conducted the research that found that 42 states do not approve neuromuscular blocking agents in the ordinary euthanasia of animals. However, almost 98% of…

After the Pentagon announced earlier this year that it would seek the death penalty for six Guantánamo Bay detainees, little progress has been made in the case. According to The American Lawyer, the military commissions have had difficulties in finding qualified and willing defense attorneys to represent the six men who are accused of planning the September 11 attacks. Tom Fleener, a former military lawyer, said, “I don’t believe any [of the 15 attorneys in the office of the chief defense…