Publications & Testimony

Supreme Court and the Death Penalty The U.S. Supreme Court will be hear­ing four death penal­ty cas­es in January 2007: SCHRIRO V. LANDRIGAN, No. 05 – 1575 This Arizona case will be argued on January 9. The Court will decide whether defense coun­sel has a duty to devel­op and offer evi­dence favor­able to the client in a death penal­ty case when the client active­ly oppos­es pre­sen­ta­tion of such mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence. On a habeas cor­pus peti­tion, the U.S. Court of…

In a rul­ing that may put all exe­cu­tions on hold in the state of Kentucky, a Franklin County Circuit Judge held that the state must hold pub­lic hear­ings because it changed the way the state plans to car­ry out exe­cu­tions. A group of death row inmates had chal­lenged the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col in 2004, and sub­se­quent­ly the state altered the mix­ture of drugs used and the way they would be admin­is­tered with­out going through the necessary administrative…

Pennsylvania State Sen. Stewart J. Greenleaf, chair­man of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced the for­ma­tion of an advi­so­ry com­mit­tee to exam­ine the cas­es of peo­ple who have been wrong­ly con­vict­ed in the state. The com­mis­sion will con­sist of about 30 mem­bers drawn from the state’s pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, judges, cor­rec­tions offi­cials, police, vic­tim advo­cates and oth­ers. The com­mis­sion will report its find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions to the…

Oscar Doster was found guilty ear­li­er this year of cap­i­tal mur­der in the course of a rob­bery in Alabama. Doster claimed that his co-defen­­dant actu­al­ly com­mit­ted the mur­der. The jury unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ed that Doster be sen­tenced to life with­out parole. In Alabama, unlike most oth­er death penal­ty states, the judge is allowed to over­ride a jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion for life. Typically in oth­er states, even one juror’s vote for a life sen­tence will pre­vent the court…

Dennis O’Neill had been an assis­tant war­den at Florida State Prison for two years and war­den at Union Correctional Institution for 7 years, both death row pris­ons. He even­tu­al­ly left the cor­rec­tion­al sys­tem and became an Episcopal priest. He was assigned back to the town of Starke, Florida, where death row inmates reside. As a cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer, he had been involved in more than a dozen exe­cu­tions over 14 years, but now O’Neill oppos­es the death penal­ty.​“For years,…

There is grow­ing con­cern among nation­al men­tal health and legal orga­ni­za­tions regard­ing inmates on death row who are severe­ly men­tal­ly ill. Many of these inmates had been exhibit­ing clear signs of men­tal ill­ness at the time of their crimes, and some, like Scott Panetti in Texas and Guy LeGrande in North Carolina, were allowed to rep­re­sent them­selves at tri­al, despite their bizarre behav­ior. Mr. Panetti, who was hos­pi­tal­ized 14 times for men­tal prob­lems pri­or to his…

The Kentucky Supreme Court reject­ed claims by death row inmates that the state’s lethal injec­tion process risks wan­ton and excru­ci­at­ing pain in vio­la­tion of the ban on cru­el and unusal pun­ish­ments. The Court upheld a 2005 low­er court rul­ing sim­i­lar­ly reject­ing the claims of inmates Ralph Baze and Thomas C. Bowling. In its unan­i­mous rul­ing, the Supreme Court held:​“Conflicting med­ical tes­ti­mo­ny pre­vents us from stat­ing cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that a pris­on­er feels no…

The last exe­cu­tion sched­uled for 2006 involves a Florida inmate, Angel Nieves-Diaz, who defend­ed him­self at his tri­al and need­ed an inter­preter because he did not speak English. Diaz, a native of Puerto Rico, was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1986 for a mur­der in con­nec­tion with a rob­bery of a bar in Miami in 1979. Diaz’s exe­cu­tion is sched­uled for December 13 and would be the 4^th exe­cu­tion in Florida this year, the most exe­cu­tions in that state in 6 years. In…

The annu­al num­ber of death sen­tences in Texas has declined from 40 in fis­cal year 1996 to 14 in 2006, a drop of 65%, accord­ing to the State Office of Court Administration. Last year there were 15 new death sen­tences. This decrease is in line with the nation­al decline in death sen­tences, which dropped from about 300 per year in the 1990s to 125 in 2005. The drop in Texas was par­tic­u­lar­ly marked in Harris County (Houston), which pro­duced the most death sen­tences of any county in…

Mark Urban, chair­man of the Governor’s Advocacy Council for Persons with Disabilities, has request­ed that North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley ful­ly con­sid­er death row inmate Guy LeGrande’s request for clemen­cy. LeGrande (pic­tured), who is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on December 1, has been diag­nosed as psychotic…