Publications & Testimony

After exten­sive pub­lic hear­ings, the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission issued a report on January 2 call­ing for an end to the state’s death penal­ty and replac­ing it with a sen­tence of life with­out parole. The 13-mem­ber Commission was appoint­ed by the state leg­is­la­ture, which also placed a mora­to­ri­um on all exe­cu­tions until a report was pre­pared. The report cit­ed the risks of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent, the high costs of the death penal­ty, and soci­ety’s evolv­ing stan­dards of decency…

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Texas Court Rejects Presidential Order in Death Penalty…

Vatican Says Death Penalty Is ​“Affront to Human…

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 cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment affects victims’…

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 those most closely impacted…

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 suf­fered a violent…

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 grounds that…

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, Florida, Maryland, Missouri,…