Publications & Testimony

In a potentially far reaching ruling, a trial judge in New Mexico has barred the state from seeking the death penalty because the legislature has failed to provide adequate funding for defense representation. The state’s Attorney General, Gary King, agreed that the capital prosecution cannot go forward. After finding that funding for the defense was insufficient and raised constitutional problems, King wrote, “The state now confesses the motion to dismiss filed herein and cannot in good faith…

A recent Colorado poll conducted by RBI Strategies and Research found that 63% of citizens believe that money spent on the death penalty would be better used to close unsolved murder cases. Citizens likely to vote in the next election were told that the death penalty costs the state an extra $3 million per year, and then asked “would you favor or oppose replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment with no possibility of parole, and using the money saved to track down and prosecute the…

Glen Edward Chapman, a North Carolina man who was sentenced to death for the 1992 murders of Betty Jean Ramseur and Tenene Yvette Conley, was released from death row on April 2 after prosecutors dropped all charges against him. In 2007, North Carolina Superior Court Judge Robert C. Ervin granted Chapman a new trial, citing withheld evidence, “lost, misplaced or destroyed” documents, the use of weak, circumstantial evidence, false testimony by the lead investigator, and ineffective assistance of…

In “Confronting Evil: Victims’ Rights in an Age of Terror,” Prof. Wayne Logan of Florida State College of Law examines the use of victim impact evidence in mass-victim prosecutions, such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the terrorist attacks of September 11. The article will appear in the forthcoming issue of the Georgetown Law Journal. Victim impact evidence (VIE) is “information on decedents’ personal traits and the ways in which their deaths have adversely affected those left behind,”…

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California has released two reports on California’s death penalty dealing with the high costs and arbitrariness of the system. The report on costs, “The Hidden Death Tax,” found that a capital trial costs counties at least $1.1 million more than a non-capital murder trial, and that the state spends an additional $117 million a year pursuing the execution of those already on death row. One trial alone cost California $10.9 million. The ACLU writes…

Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia stayed the upcoming execution of Edward Bell, scheduled for April 8, 2008. In so doing, the governor issued a statement staying other executions and noting the U.S. Supreme Court’s consideration of the lethal injection issue (Baze v. Rees). The statement also remarked on the disruption that the setting of an execution date can cause: In order to await the Supreme Court’s ruling in Baze, and respecting the national legal consensus that no execution go forward until…

On March 28, two letters were sent to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice — one from members of the law enforcement community and the other from judges, raising concerns about the state’s death penalty. Thirty law enforcement officers, including current and former prosecutors, police chiefs and other officers, signed a letter stating that “California’s death penalty is broken.” The letter cites multiple reasons why the state’s death penalty system is not working, such…

On March 24, Maryland lawmakers voted to create a commission to study the state’s death penalty. The House voted 89 – 48 and the Senate by 32 – 15 to establish the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment to research racial, socio-economical, and geographic disparities in the application of the death penalty as well as evaluate the risk of executing an innocent person. The commission will consider the costs of the death penalty as compared to a sentence of life without parole. Its findings and…

A recent Arizona Legal Studies paper on murder cases in Missouri found both geographical and racial disparities in the application of the death penalty. “Life and Death Decisions: Prosecutorial Discretion and Capital Punishment in Missouri,” by Katherine Barnes of Arizona University Law School, and David Sloss and Stephen Thaman of St. Louis Univeristy Law School, studied 1046 cases of intentional homicide in Missouri to determine geographical and racial effects in the rates at which…