Publications & Testimony

State Assemblyman Nelson T. Albano of Cape May, New Jersey, announced at a forum on the death penal­ty that he has changed his mind and now oppos­es cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Albano said that his change of heart came after read­ing a book about Kirk Bloodsworth, the 1^st death-row inmate in the United States to be exon­er­at­ed by DNA evi­dence. The book led him to the insight into that the cap­i­­tal-pun­ish­­ment sys­tem is flawed and should be…

In an arti­cle enti­tled The Death Penalty: No Evidence for Deterrence, John Donnohue and Justin Wolfers exam­ined recent sta­tis­ti­cal stud­ies that claimed to show a deter­rent effect from the death penal­ty. The authors con­clude that the esti­mates claim­ing that the death penal­ty saves numer­ous lives​“are sim­ply not cred­i­ble.” In fact, the authors state that using the same data and prop­er method­ol­o­gy could lead to the exact oppo­site con­clu­sion: that is, that the…

At a hear­ing in fed­er­al District Court in Maryland, Dr. Mark Heath, an anes­the­si­ol­o­gist and assis­tant pro­fes­sor at Columbia University, tes­ti­fied that those des­ig­nat­ed to car­ry out lethal injec­tions in the state were unpre­pared and unqual­i­fied for the task.​“The total­i­ty of all their knowl­edge is gross­ly inad­e­quate,” Heath stat­ed. Sworn tes­ti­mo­ny from mem­bers of the exe­cu­tion team was shown at the hear­ing. In one video­taped seg­ment, the doc­tor who was…

DPIC’s Lethal Injection Page ABA Report Finds Serious Problems in Florida’s Capital Punishment System A new report issued by the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project found that Florida’s appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty fails to com­ply with ABA stan­dards to ensure fair­ness and accu­ra­cy. This report was com­piled by an eight-mem­ber team com­posed of crim­i­nal jus­tice experts from Florida. The report cites prob­lems in numerous…

Jeffrey Deskovic had been con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to life in prison in 1990 for the rape and mur­der of a high school class­mate in New York. He was freed from prison on September 20 after DNA evi­dence from the crime was matched with anoth­er man who also con­fessed to the mur­der. The oth­er man was already in prison for a mur­der in the same coun­ty. The DNA evi­dence that did not match Deskovic was pre­sent­ed at his orig­i­nal tri­al. However, Deskovic had con­fessed to the crime to…

The U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay of exe­cu­tion to Clarence Hill who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed at 6 pm on September 20 in Florida. Four Justices would have grant­ed the stay. Hill had raised a civ­il rights chal­lenge to Florida’s lethal injec­tion law after the Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly ruled in June in his favor that such a chal­lenge was prop­er. However, the low­er courts stat­ed that his claim was filed too late and they denied him an evi­den­tiary hearing on…

As the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission con­tin­ued its review of the state’s law, the Asbury Park Press called for replac­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment with the sen­tence of life with­out parole. This would bet­ter serve the fam­i­lies of vic­tims, accord­ing to the edi­to­r­i­al, because the death penal­ty caus­es years of uncer­tain­ty with lit­tle prospect that the sen­tence will be car­ried out. The edi­to­r­i­al stat­ed:Reasons to drop death penal­ty Posted by the…

An eight-mem­ber pan­el con­vened by the American Bar Association and con­sist­ing of pros­e­cu­tors, defense lawyers, and judges con­clud­ed a two-year study of Florida​’s death penal­ty sys­tem. The pan­el unan­i­mous­ly pro­posed exten­sive changes to improve the accu­ra­cy and fair­ness of the state’s system. ​“Despite the best efforts of many leg­is­la­tors, judges and lawyers, much more needs to be done to ensure that Florida’s death penal­ty sys­tem avoids executing…

Chief Judge William Wilkins of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4^th Circuit recent­ly spoke about the death penal­ty to a gath­er­ing at the Charleston School of Law in South Carolina. He com­ment­ed that deci­­sion-mak­ers will have to eval­u­ate whether the pun­ish­ment is worth its increas­ing finan­cial costs. But he also not­ed how dif­fi­cult it is for a politi­cian to speak open­ly about this issue:​“I think polit­i­cal­ly, you’re not going to find a can­di­date run­ning on​‘Let’s do…

“Reflective Glass” is a new book by death row inmate G. Wilford Hathorn. The book is a col­lec­tion of fif­teen essays that deal with life on Texas’ death row from a pris­on­er’s per­spec­tive. The essays describe many aspects of death row life: the pain of los­ing friends through exe­cu­tion, the med­ical treat­ment of pris­on­ers, the monot­o­ny of liv­ing in a tiny cell, and the…