Publications & Testimony

Although no jury has returned a death sen­tence in a fed­er­al case in Puerto Rico in mod­ern times, more cas­es are pend­ing, rais­ing con­cerns among many cit­i­zens. Puerto Rico bars the death penal­ty in its con­sti­tu­tion. However, a U.S. Court of Appeals deci­sion in 2001 held that the fed­er­al death penal­ty can be applied there. This deci­sion over­turned a low­er court that ruled the use of the fed­er­al death penal­ty in the Commonwealth would be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The issue…

The Albany Democrat-Herald in Oregon recent­ly edi­to­ri­al­ized that the​“death penal­ty isn’t work­ing,” and con­clud­ed​“that the death penal­ty here is a point­less law. If we’re not going to apply this law, then get­ting rid of it would be the less expen­sive course.” The edi­to­r­i­al cit­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of error, the arbi­trari­ness of apply­ing the pun­ish­ment to some dan­ger­ous offend­ers but not oth­ers, and the dif­fi­cul­ty of ever…

The Death Penalty Subcommittee of the Committee on Public Defense of the Washington State Bar has pre­pared a report on the state’s death penal­ty that will be sub­mit­ted to the Bar Association’s Board of Governors in ear­ly 2007. The Subcommittee was formed to exam­ine the costs of the state’s death penal­ty and to rec­om­mend whether the death penal­ty should be con­tin­ued, giv­en the expens­es and the state’s expe­ri­ence in car­ry­ing out death sen­tences. The Death Penalty Subcommittee…

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has just released the 2005 ver­sion of its annu­al report on the death penal­ty in the U.S. The report notes that both the num­ber of death sen­tences and the size of death row were down for 2005, and that this rep­re­sents a trend over the past 5 years. The report states that there were 60 exe­cu­tions in 2005, all by lethal injec­tion, and that the time between sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion was longer in 2005…

On December 5, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania intro­duced leg­is­la­tion (S. 4081) to restore the right to habeas cor­pus to those deemed to be ene­my com­bat­ants and who are fac­ing tri­al before mil­i­tary com­mis­sions, includ­ing those being detained at the U.S. Guantanamo prison in Cuba. Habeas cor­pus pro­vides an avenue for inmates in deten­tion to chal­lenge the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of their con­fine­ment. The roots of this protection…

Recently in Ohio and oth­er states, some inmates chal­leng­ing the lethal injec­tion process in fed­er­al courts have been giv­en stays of exe­cu­tions, while oth­ers, sim­i­lar­ly sit­u­at­ed, have been denied stays and have been exe­cut­ed. This incon­sis­tent appli­ca­tion of fed­er­al law in cap­i­tal cas­es has raised con­cerns among a num­ber of fed­er­al judges. A stay was recent­ly grant­ed to Ohio inmate Jerome Henderson, but denied to Jeffrey Lundgren. On December 6, U.S. District…

Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights will release a new report on December 10 entitled ​“Creating More Victims: How Executions Hurt the Families Left Behind.” 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 loss.

Stays have been grant­ed in two of the three exe­cu­tions that had still been sched­uled for December. On December 1 in Ohio, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6^th Circuit grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion to Jerome Henderson, whose exe­cu­tion had been sched­uled for December 5. Henderson was allowed to join a chal­lenge to the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. The 6^th Circuit denied the state’s request to rehear the issue, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to lift the stay.

According to the November 2006 edi­tion of the Texas Bar Journal pub­lished by the State Bar of Texas, the State Bar has adopt­ed a Texas ver­sion of the American Bar Association’s Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases. The intro­duc­tion to the Texas Guidelines…

A recent arti­cle in the Cornell Law Review argues that state death penal­ty laws that allow the death penal­ty for the crime of rape of a child where no death occurs may be…