Publications & Testimony

Legislation to estab­lish a com­mis­sion to exam­ine Kentucky’s death penal­ty and report its find­ings to the General Assembly has gained sup­port from for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cials and vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers. The bill, pro­posed by Rep. Tom Burch, would require the task force to review whether cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment deters crime, is applied fair­ly, and is still accept­able to the pub­lic. It would mark the first time in four decades that the state has examined its…

Corrections offi­cials, pros­e­cu­tors and police chiefs recent­ly gath­ered in Annapolis, Maryland, to voice sup­port for a leg­isla­tive mea­sure that would repeal the state’s death penal­ty.​“It is a human sys­tem, and because it is fal­li­ble and because it is human, it makes mis­takes. Executions make those mis­takes irre­versible,” said Matthew Campbell, a for­mer deputy state’s attor­ney for Montgomery and Howard coun­ties. Gary J. Hilton, a for­mer war­den at the Trenton State Prison…

Dr. Philip B. Woodhall, M.D., who prac­ticed emer­gency med­i­cine in North Carolina for many years, recent­ly wrote about the pro­posed role of doc­tors in car­ry­ing out lethal injec­tions. He stat­ed that med­i­cine and exe­cu­tions do not mix. “[D]octors are giv­en extra­or­di­nary rights and priv­i­leges,” he wrote, and​“these pow­ers are ded­i­cat­ed to the preser­va­tion of human life, not to the ser­vice of death.” Woodhall urged North Carolina’s Department of Corrections to abandon…

Maricopa County, Arizona, has more pend­ing death penal­ty cas­es than Los Angeles County, which has more than twice as many res­i­dents, and more than the so-called​“death penal­ty cap­i­tal” of Harris County, Texas. There are more than 130 cas­es in tri­al or await­ing tri­al, and its four indi­gent defense agen­cies say that they have run out of attor­neys to han­dle the cas­es. Strained by the record num­ber of cas­es, Judge James Keppel gave pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, and…

The doc­u­men­tary film Race To Execution by Rachel Lyon will air nation­al­ly on the Emmy Award-win­n­ing PBS series Independent Lens on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 10 p.m. Race to Execution offers a com­pelling and orig­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion of America’s death penal­ty, prob­ing how race dis­crim­i­na­tion infects the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. The film reveals the poten­tial bias­es in the racial por­tray­al of vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors in the media, particularly where…

Litigating in the Shadow of Death by the late Welsh White is an absorb­ing account of the ways in which defense attor­neys rep­re­sent cap­i­tal defen­dants. The author brings to light the para­mount role these attor­neys have played in shap­ing the mod­ern sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, show­ing how high­ly skilled defense lawyers are some­times able to avoid death sen­tences for their clients even in very dif­fi­cult cas­es. In oth­er cas­es, attor­neys have demon­strat­ed to the…

In her book,​“Lethal Punishment: Lynchings and Legal Executions in the South,” University of Memphis pro­fes­sor Margaret Vandiver explores the com­plex rela­tion­ship between these two forms of pun­ish­ment and chal­lenges the assump­tion that exe­cu­tions con­sis­tent­ly grew out of — and replaced — lynch­ings. Vandiver’s book exam­ines lynch­ings and legal exe­cu­tions in three cul­tur­al­ly and geo­graph­i­cal­ly dis­tinct south­ern regions. First she researched rural northwest…

Florida Commission Recommends Changes to Lethal Injection Process ABA Panel Finds Executions in Indiana​‘Random’ The Indiana Death Penalty Assessment Team, under the aus­pices of the American Bar Association, has called for a halt to exe­cu­tions in the state because of con­cerns about the arbi­trari­ness of the state’s death penal­ty.​“The seem­ing­ly ran­dom process of charg­ing deci­sions, plea agree­ments, and jury rec­om­men­da­tions is just part of a death…

According to a recent Maryland poll, a large major­i­ty of vot­ers in the state sup­port replac­ing the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out parole. The poll, con­duct­ed by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc., found that 61% of those sur­veyed believe that the sen­tence of life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole is​“an accept­able sub­sti­tute for the death penal­ty.” Only 27% of respon­dents dis­agreed. Support for life with­out parole in Maryland has…

The French par­lia­ment vot­ed to amend the coun­try’s Constitution to include an explic­it ban on the death penal­ty. In a spe­cial joint ses­sion held at the Palace of Versailles (pic­tured), France’s National Assembly and Senate passed the amend­ment by a vote of 828 – 26. The death penal­ty has been out­lawed in France since 1981, but the recent­ly passed amend­ment offi­cial­ly inscribes the pro­hi­bi­tion into the con­sti­tu­tion.​“We are accom­plish­ing the wish…