Publications & Testimony

On March 7, 2008, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the conviction and death sentence of Richard Taylor. The court’s ruling grants Taylor a new trial due to a variety of constitutional errors at his original trial. These errors include the denial of his constitutional right to counsel at a pre-trial competency hearing, the failure of the trial court to hold a competency hearing during the trial, and the failure of the trial court to appoint advisory counsel. Taylor, who is…

Reverend Joseph B. Ingle’s book, Last Rights: Thirteen Fatal Encounters with the State’s Justice, will be re-released in May with a new introduction by Mike Farrell (of M*A*S*H*) and with its original forward by William Styron. Rev. Ingle, who has counseled inmates on death row for over 30 years, recounts his close relationships with 13 of these inmates before their executions. Devoting a chapter to each one, Ingle stresses the need to see each inmate as an individual. He writes, “The public…

On Monday, April 14, 2008, Seton Hall Law School will be hosting a conference on the recent abolition of the death penalty in New Jersey. “Legislation, Litigation, Reflection, and Repeal: The Legislative Abolition of the Death Penalty in New Jersey” is an all-day event sponsored by Fordham Law School, The New Jersey State Bar Association, The New York Bar Association Capital Punishment Committee, and Seton Hall Law School. Four panels will examine New Jersey’s death penalty from its…

Since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, the state of New York has been more reluctant to impose death sentences than other states, according to the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project. New York federal prosecutors have asked juries to impose death sentences 19 times, but in only one of those cases did they vote for the death penalty. Nationally, federal prosecutors win death penalties in about 33% of cases. In some cases, federal judges in New York have asked the…

Study Reveals Maryland’s Death Penalty is Costing Taxpayers $186 Million A study released on March 6, 2008 found that Maryland taxpayers are paying $186 million dollars for a system that has resulted in five executions since 1978 when the state reenacted the death penalty. That would be equivalent to $37.2 per execution. The study, prepared by the Urban Institute, estimates that the average cost to Maryland taxpayers for reaching a single death sentence is $3 million — $1.9 million more than…

The New Hampshire House of Representatives passed a bill to establish a Commission to Study the Death Penalty. Many officials who have had first-hand experience with New Hampshire’s death penalty, including former Attorneys General Phillip McLaughlin, Peter Heed and Greg Smith, former Superior Court Chief Justice Walter Murphy and former Supreme Court Justice William Batchelder, support the establishment of a commission to study the state’s death penalty procedures. If passed, the bill will…

The Innocence Commission, a new book by Jon B. Gould, describes how the advent of DNA testing and other forensic advances in the criminal justice system have led to serious efforts to understand how so many wrongful convictions have happened. In particular, The Innocence Commission details the first years of the Innocence Commission for Virginia (ICVA), which was the first in the country to conduct systemic research into all wrongful convictions in the state. Gould, the Chair of ICVA, examines…

Federal District Court Judge Jack B. Weinstein said recently that seeking the death penalty against Humberto Pepin Taveras in New York is not worth the effort of prosecutors or taxpayers’ money. “Based on the history of cases tried in metropolitan New York, the chance of Pepin receiving the death penalty is virtually nil,” Weinstein said. The case against Taveras, who confessed to murdering two drug traffickers in the 1990s while already serving more than 12 years in prison for other crimes…

During his 15-year tenure on the court, Orange County Superior Court Judge Donald McCartin sentenced nine men to death. Now retired, Judge McCartin no longer believes in the death penalty. “It’s a waste of time and taxpayers’ money,” Judge McCartin said. “It cost 10 times more to kill these guys than to keep them alive in prison. It’s absurd. And imagine the poor victims’ families having to go through this again and again.” All but one of the nine men Judge McCartin sentenced to death still…

Connecticut Superior Court Judge Stanley T. Fuger ruled on February 27 that a suit alleging racial and geographic bias in the state’s death penalty should not be dismissed. Judge Fuger is allowing the claim from seven death row inmates to continue because the state’s constitution gives defendants greater legal rights than the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court had rejected a similar claim about Georgia’s death penalty in 1987 based on federal constitutional grounds. In his ruling on a…