Publications & Testimony

Victor Streib, who has been researching the subject of women and the death penalty for 20 years, has released an updated version of his report “Death Penalty for Female Offenders.” In his research, Prof. Streib, a professor at Elon University School of Law in North Carolina and Ohio Northern University’s Pettit College of Law, has found that women are significantly less likely than men to receive a death sentence, possibly because prosecutors seem less inclined to seek the death penalty against…

The Death Penalty Information Center has conducted a survey of death row populations as reported by the various state departments of correction in January/February 2008. From that survey, the current death row population across the country is 3,263. California continues to have the highest death row population with 669 inmates. Florida follows with 388, and Texas has 370 inmates. A state-by-state breakdown appears below. Except for Illinois and the federal government, these numbers are the…

A mentally retarded man in Texas accepted a life sentence for a murder that occurred over 28 years ago. Johnny Paul Penry was originally sentenced to death for the sexual assault and murder of Pamela Mosley Carpenter, a relative of a professional football star. Penry’s death sentence was overturned twice by the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to the plea agreement on February 15, 2008, the prosecution was insisting on a fourth capital sentencing hearing for Penry. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court…

Judge Stephen Roth of Utah has decided to force an unwilling attorney to handle the appeal of death-row inmate Ralph Leroy Menzies after no qualified lawyers were willing to take the assignment for the amount of pay offered. “The court ultimately concludes that it has the authority to appoint unwilling counsel to represent the petitioner here, but only if the attorney appointed is justly compensated,” Roth wrote. The judge will ask attorney Richard P. Mauro for evidence of past and future…

Days after the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the electric chair was unconstitutional, a Lincoln Journal Star editorial urged the state to reconsider the death penalty: “Instead of rushing to pass a new means of capital punishment, the Legislature should take this opportunity to finally get rid of the death penalty.” Nebraska was the only state to retain the electric chair as its sole means of execution. The paper noted that it was the right time to take a broader look at the death penalty.

Nebraska Supreme Court Rules Electrocution Unconstitutional The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled on February 8, 2008, that electrocution is cruel and unusual punishment under the state’s constitution, outlawing the electric chair in the only state that still used it as its sole means of execution. In the landmark ruling, the court said the state legislature may vote to have a death penalty, just not one that offends rights under the state constitution. The evidence shows that electrocution…

Kennedy Brewer, who spent almost 15 years on Mississippi’s death row for the 1992 murder and rape of his girlfriend’s 3‑year-old daughter, has been exonerated of the charges, and another man, Justin Johnson, has been arrested for the same crime. A 2001 investigation by the Innocence Project found that the semen on the victim’s body did not match Brewer’s DNA, but did match Johnson’s. Johnson was a suspect early in the case, and his blood was collected and preserved in the Mississippi State…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) recently ordered relief for two death row inmates, acknowledging that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from last year affected a series of cases that were tried before the state changed its death penalty statute. The Texas CCA reversed the death sentence of Jose Angel Moreno, whose execution was stayed just hours before it was to occur last May. He may now have a new sentencing hearing and the opportunity to present a range of mitigating evidence that the…