Publications & Testimony

Deborah Denno (pic­tured), Professor of Law at Fordham University and one of the nation’s lead­ing experts on meth­ods of exe­cu­tion, has writ­ten a research paper exam­in­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of cur­rent lethal injection statutes. ​“The Lethal Injection Quandary: How Medicine Has Dismantled the Death Penalty” presents the results of her nation­wide study of lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures and physi­cian involve­ment, and makes two rec­om­men­da­tions that aim…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…