Publications & Testimony

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…

The Austin American-Statesman con­duct­ed an exten­sive study of the qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion that death row inmates receive in Texas. The study concluded…

The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty will hold its nation­al con­fer­ence at the Fair Lakes Hyatt Hotel in Fairfax, Virginia, October 26 – 29, 2006. The NCADP con­sists of a wide spec­trum of groups and indi­vid­u­als opposed to the death penal­ty. Among the speak­ers at this year’s event are Theodore Shaw, President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Hugo A. Bedau, author and Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Tufts University, and numerous individuals…

“The Dreams of Ada” by Robert Mayer tells a sto­ry strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar to that recount­ed by John Grisham in ​“The Innocent Man.” Each book involves the mur­der of a young woman from Ada, Oklahoma in the ear­ly 1980s. In both cas­es, there are two defen­dants whose con­vic­tions rely on lit­tle pro­ba­tive evi­dence but involve​“con­fes­sions” that emerged from a dream. Both pros­e­cu­tions were led by Bill Peterson and both involved the same jail-house infor­mant. The…