Publications & Testimony

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

(Pictured left to right, Harold Wilson, Barry Scheck, and Sam Millsap) During a press con­fer­ence near the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, 16 for­mer death row inmates whose con­vic­tions were over­turned joined not­ed attor­ney Barry Scheck (pic­tured) and for­mer Texas pros­e­cu­tor Sam Millsap (pic­tured) in call­ing for a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in Pennsylvania. Harold C. Wilson (pic­tured), the most recent of six death row exonerees in the state, not­ed that he spent 16 years on…

A Cincinnati Enquirer inves­ti­ga­tion of Ohio cap­i­tal cas­es found that more death sen­tences are over­turned in the state because of mis­takes by defense lawyers than for any oth­er rea­son. Reporters with the Enquirer found that 15 peo­ple on Ohio’s death row won fed­er­al appeals dur­ing the past sev­en years based entire­ly or in part on the poor per­for­mance of their lawyers.​“It’s a big, big prob­lem. The lawyers don’t have the where­with­al to put on a first-class defense,”…

Noting that they​“can­not rec­on­cile the fact that [the death penal­ty] is both imper­fect and irre­versible,” the Dallas Morning News has called on Texas to aban­don cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The paper, which has long sup­port­ed the death penal­ty, changed its posi­tion after care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of mount­ing evi­dence that the state has wrong­ly con­vict­ed a num­ber of defen­dants in cap­i­tal tri­als and has like­ly exe­cut­ed at least one man who…

On Wednesday, April 18, at 1 PM, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argu­ments in Panetti v. Quarterman. This case focus­es on the ques­tion of whether an inmate must have a ratio­nal under­stand­ing of his crime and why he is being pun­ished pri­or to exe­cu­tion, or whether mere aware­ness of his sit­u­a­tion is suf­fi­cient for men­tal com­pe­ten­cy. For a fuller descrip­tion of the case, see Supreme Court (Pending 2007 cas­es). This page includes links to some of…