Publications & Testimony

The for­mer war­den of the Virginia prison that hous­es the state’s death row inmates has called for clemen­cy for a man about to be exe­cut­ed on November 9. Page True was war­den of the Sussex I State Prison and knew death row inmate John Schmitt for over 4 years.​“The crime was just ter­ri­ble,” True said,​“but there’s a lot worse inmates that I’ve dealt with in my 36 years in prison systems than…

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DPIC’s Lethal Injection Page Federal Judge Carolyn Dineen King Speaks on the Death Penalty at Red Mass October 4, 2006 marked the annu­al litur­gy held for mem­bers of the legal pro­fes­sion called the Red Mass. This year’s keynote speak­er in Corpus Christi, Texas, was Judge Carolyn Dineen King of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She chose to speak about the death penal­ty from both a legal and moral point of view, while…

Bonita Spikes’ hus­band was mur­dered 12 years ago. She now works to end the death penal­ty in Maryland. She recent­ly wrote about her per­spec­tive on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the Baltimore Sun. She…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of a death row inmate on a tie vote (7 – 7), despite the fact that the defen­dant was rep­re­sent­ed by an attor­ney who did not even learn his clien­t’s true name. The defense lawyer mis­led a review­ing court about his expe­ri­ence in cap­i­tal cas­es and has been indict­ed for per­jury. The defen­dant, who was tried in Kentucky as James Slaughter but whose real name is Jeffrey Leonard, is…

At a press con­fer­ence on November 1, the North Carolina Black Leadership Caucus called for the gov­er­nor to com­mute the death sen­tence of Guy LeGrande. Le Grande is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on December 1. He was allowed to rep­re­sent him­self at his 1996 mur­der tri­al, despite the fact that he claimed to be hear­ing mes­sages from Oprah Winfrey and Dan Rather through tele­vi­sion sets. His defense lawyer, Jay Ferguson, said LeGrande false­ly believes he has already…

China has adopt­ed new rules that will require all death sen­tences to be reviewed by the Supreme People’s Court, the coun­try’s high­est court. In the past, China has been con­sis­tent­ly list­ed as the lead­ing coun­try in the world in car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions. The cur­rent reforms are a response to domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al crit­i­cism that cit­ed China’s wide­spread and arbi­trary use of the death penal­ty. In addi­tion, Chinese courts have been embar­rassed in recent years when…

Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton of the Ohio Supreme Court called upon the leg­is­la­ture to exempt defen­dants with seri­ous men­tal ill­ness from the death penal­ty. Judge Stratton con­curred in the affir­mance of the death sen­tence for Donald Ketterer. She not­ed that she was not ques­tion­ing Ketterer’s guilt, nor whether he was com­pe­tent to stand tri­al, nor even his pos­si­ble men­tal retar­da­tion, all of which are cov­ered by oth­er aspects of the law. Rather the judge said she was…

According to a new report from the FBI, the num­ber of police offi­cers killed in the line of duty declined in 2005 com­pared with 2004, and was 22% less than the num­ber killed in 2001. Fifty-five law enforce­ment offi­cers were felo­nious­ly killed in 2005, 57 in 2004, and 70 in 2001. The South had the largest num­ber of police offi­cers killed, almost three times more than any of the oth­er regions in the coun­try. Twenty-eight offi­cers were killed in the South, 10 in the Midwest, 10 in…

The Fall 2006 edi­tion of the Golden Gate University Law Review con­tains papers from the recent Symposium entitled ​“The Faces of Wrongful Conviction” that was held at UCLA in April 2006. The jour­nal includes arti­cles by Simon Cole on fin­ger­print evi­dence, by Alexandra Natapoff on the use of snitch­es, by Craig Haney on expand­ing beyond inno­cence when exam­in­ing injus­tices in cap­i­tal cas­es, and by Thomas Sullivan on the record­ing of cus­to­di­al inter­views.(37 Golden…