Publications & Testimony

If James Lee Clark is exe­cut­ed in Texas on April 11, he will be the 12^th Texas inmate exe­cut­ed out of 13 exe­cu­tions nation­wide in 2007. According to some psy­cho­log­i­cal tests, Clark has an IQ of 68 or low­er, which is one of the com­mon cri­te­ria for men­tal retar­da­tion. Clark’s defense team has asked the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Texas Governor Rick Perry to halt the exe­cu­tion because of the like­li­hood that Clark suf­fers from mental…

From 1999 to 2004, Dr. Johnny Glenn was the only foren­sic pathol­o­gist per­form­ing autop­sies in the poor­est part of Alabama. He was assist­ed only by lab tech­ni­cians as he per­formed hun­dreds of autop­sies annu­al­ly, includ­ing at least one death penal­ty case. After his abrupt depar­ture, it was dis­cov­ered that Glenn rou­tine­ly put aside his notes and often failed to fin­ish final reports or dia­grams that are cru­cial to death inves­ti­ga­tions. Two of his for­mer col­leagues say that Glenn was…

“Justice Talking” on National Public Radio recent­ly addressed cur­rent death penal­ty issues, includ­ing an exam­i­na­tion of the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing lethal injec­tions. The pro­gram, which is avail­able online, fea­tured an overview of the U.S. death penal­ty by pro­fes­sor John Blume, founder and direc­tor of the Cornell Death Penalty Project at Cornell University, and an inter­view with Deborah Denno, a pro­fes­sor of law at Fordham University who is one of the nation’s lead­ing schol­ars on the…

Pennsylvania has con­vened a com­mis­sion of judges, pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, law enforce­ment offi­cers and vic­tims’ advo­cates to study the caus­es of wrong­ful con­vic­tions and make rec­om­men­da­tions for pre­vent­ing them in the state. Forensic errors, mis­tak­en eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tions and false con­fes­sions have led to wrong­ful con­vic­tions around the nation, includ­ing 9 peo­ple from Pennsylvania who have been exon­er­at­ed by DNA evi­dence. The com­mis­sion of 40 mem­bers was sponsored…

In 2006, U.S. District Judge Malcolm J. Howard allowed two men to be exe­cut­ed by lethal injec­tion after prison offi­cials indi­cat­ed that a physi­cian and a nurse at the exe­cu­tion would mon­i­tor a type of brain-wave machine to ensure that the inmates were uncon­scious and not in pain when the par­a­lyz­ing and heart-stop­ping drugs were inject­ed. However, a depo­si­tion giv­en in November 2006 by Central Prison war­den Marvin Polk (pic­tured) is now rais­ing ques­tions about whether the judge was mis­led. In…

The Global Debate on the Death Penalty by Sandra Babcock, Human Rights, American Bar Association, Spring 2007 • Vol. 34, No. 2Richard Cohen, ​“Let Saddam Live.” Washington Post, December 18, 2003Richard Dieter, ​“International Influence on the Death Penalty in the U.S.” Foreign Service Journal, October 2003.Shapiro, Bruce, ​“Dead Reckoning” The Nation, August 6, 2001.Dorf, Michael, ​“When U.S. states…

What does the cross tell us about the ethics of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment?by Tobias WinrightSojourners Magazine April…

The Justice Project, in con­junc­tion with The Justice Project Education Fund, has issued two com­pre­hen­sive pol­i­cy reviews designed to facil­i­tate com­mu­ni­ca­tion among local law enforce­ment agen­cies, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, prac­ti­tion­ers, and oth­ers who are con­cerned about the issues of eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and the elec­tron­ic record­ing of cus­to­di­al inter­ro­ga­tions. The reviews exam­ine each of these issues and iden­ti­fy pit­falls and ​“best prac­tices” with the lat­est research behind them.

“Sacco and Vanzetti” is an 80-minute-long doc­u­men­tary that tells the sto­ry of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immi­grants who were accused of a mur­der in 1920, and exe­cut­ed in Boston in 1927 after a con­tro­ver­sial tri­al. It is the first major doc­u­men­tary film about this land­mark sto­ry, which came to sym­bol­ize the bias against immi­grants by some in America. At the time of their exe­cu­tion, mil­lions of peo­ple in the U.S. and around the world protest­ed on their behalf, and…

Jim Davidsaver, a 20-year vet­er­an with the Lincoln Police Department in Nebraska, recent­ly wrote a col­umn out­lin­ing his sup­port for leg­is­la­tion that would have repealed the state’s death penal­ty. Davidsaver said he sup­port­ed the mea­sure, which failed to pass into law, because the death penal­ty does not deter crime and is too expen­sive. He not­ed that in his years of ser­vice with the police force he wit­nessed many hor­rif­ic crime scenes, but none of the accused…