Publications & Testimony

EXECUTION REPRIEVES Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio grant­ed tem­po­rary reprieves to three inmates sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in the next 5 weeks in order to allow more time to con­sid­er whether clemen­cy should be grant­ed: Kenneth Biros, James Filiaggi, and Christopher Newton. (Jan. 19, 2007). See…

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…

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Texas Court Rejects Presidential Order in…

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…