Publications & Testimony

In Kansas v. Marsh (2006), the Supreme Court held in a vote of 5 to 4 that a Kansas statute requir­ing that a death sen­tence be imposed when a jury finds that the aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances in a case have equal weight was con­sti­tu­tion­al. Justice Souter, dis­agree­ing with the Court’s deci­sion, authored the dissenting…

Vatican Says Death Penalty Is​“Affront to…

Wounds That Do Not Bind: Victim-based Perspectives on the Death Penalty, a book by James R. Acker and David Reed Karp, exam­ines how fam­i­ly mem­bers and advo­cates for vic­tims address the impact of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The book presents the per­son­al sto­ries of vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers and their inter­ac­tions with the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. It also exam­ines the rel­e­vant areas of legal research, includ­ing the use of vic­tim impact evi­dence in cap­i­tal tri­als, how…

Murdering Myths: The Story Behind the Death Penalty, a book by Judith W. Kay, uses the per­son­al expe­ri­ences of both crime vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and those on death row to exam­ine America’s beliefs about crime and pun­ish­ment. Noting that researchers have raised ques­tions about the exe­cu­tion of inno­cent peo­ple, racial bias in sen­tenc­ing, and cap­i­tal pun­ish­men­t’s fail­ure to act as a deter­rent, Kay asks why Americans still sup­port the death penal­ty. She uses interviews with…

Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights released a report entitled ​“Creating More Victims: How Executions Hurt the Families Left Behind”(2006). Families of the exe­cut­ed are vic­tims, too, accord­ing to the new report, which draws upon the sto­ries of three dozen fam­i­ly mem­bers of inmates exe­cut­ed in the United States and demon­strates that their expe­ri­ences and trau­mat­ic symp­toms resem­ble those of many oth­ers who have…

One of the first inmates sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in 2007 is Ronald Chambers, who has been on death row since Gerald Ford was President, and longer than any oth­er inmate in Texas. He is fac­ing exe­cu­tion on January 25, thir­­ty-one years after he was first sen­tenced to death for mur­der. His co-defen­­dant in the crime, Clarence Ray Williams, plead­ed guilty and is serv­ing two life sen­tences. Chambers’ con­vic­tion was over­turned twice since 1976, includ­ing once on the…

As 2006 draws to a close, most exe­cu­tions in ten states are effec­tive­ly on hold as aspects of their cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment laws are exam­ined. Two states, Illinois and New Jersey, have a for­mal mora­to­ri­um on all exe­cu­tions while the via­bil­i­ty of the death penal­ty is con­sid­ered. In eight oth­er states, almost all exe­cu­tions are being stayed as the states grap­ple with the lethal injec­tion issue. Those states are Arkansas, California, Delaware,…

In his final arti­cle for 2006, colum­nist Richard Cohen chose to high­light the​“mad­ness of the death penal­ty” and to draw atten­tion to the exe­cu­tion of those with men­tal ill­ness. Cohen used the case of Gregory Thompson, a severe­ly men­tal­ly ill Tennessee death row inmate, to illus­trate some of the broad­er prob­lems with the death penal­ty. Thompson is delu­sion­al, para­noid, schiz­o­phrenic, and depressed. He takes 12 pills every day and receives twice-monthly anti-psychotic…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s​“Death Row, USA” reports that the num­ber of peo­ple on death row in the United States has con­tin­ued to decline, falling to 3,344 as of October 1, 2006. The size of death row has been declin­ing since 2000 after 25 years of steady increas­es. For the first time in many years, Florida (398) sur­passed Texas (392) in the size of its deathrow. California (657) con­tin­ued to have the…

Following an announce­ment that pros­e­cu­tors would not seek the death penal­ty for Naveed Haq, who is accused of killing one woman and wound­ing five oth­ers at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, two of Haq’s vic­tims said they sup­port­ed the deci­sion to seek a life sen­tence.​“The death penal­ty most like­ly pro­mul­gates fur­ther vio­lence and revenge,” said Cheryl Stumbo, who was wound­ed in the attack. King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng clas­si­fied it as​“one of the most…