Publications & Testimony

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) has filed a judicial complaint against the Presiding Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Sharon Keller (pictured), the first time the group says it has ever filed a complaint against a judge. NACDL has asked the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct to review Judge Keller’s decision to turn away the last appeal of a death row inmate because the rushed filing was submitted past the court’s 5 p.m. closing time. Attorneys for…

The Spring 2007 edition of the American Bar Association’s Human Rights quarterly features a series of articles by outstanding authors about the death penalty, including a 30-year retrospective on capital punishment in the U.S. The articles contained in the publication are: A Thirty-Year Retrospective of the Death Penalty By Stephen F. Hanlon Monitoring Death Sentencing Decisions: The Challenges and Barriers to Equity By Glenn L. Pierce and Michael L. Radelet Mental Disability and Capital…

Funds for community policing programs have been significantly slashed in recent years, a development that experts link to the government’s new focus on fighting terrorism. The U.S. Department of Justice provided $7 billion in federal funds for community policing programs between 1994 and 2001, but it has awarded only $208 million for local departments this year. “Many of those funds have been shifted to homeland security, which also is very important in this day and age,” said University of…

The New York Court of Appeals ruled today (October 23, 2007) that the death sentence of the last remaining inmate on the state’s death row was unconstitutional under state law. John Taylor’s sentence will be changed to life in prison without parole. An earlier decision by the state’s high court in 2004 overturned the state’s statute because of flaws in the jury instructions. (People v. LaValle). Following hearings on the problems with capital punishment in the state, the New York legislature…

Following the release of a new study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health concerning the failure of deterrence in drug use, medical experts commented that deterrence also fails in the area of capital punishment. “It is very clear that deterrents are not effective in the area of capital punishment,” said Dr. Jonathan Groner, an associate professor of surgery at Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health who researches the deterrent effect of capital punishment. “The…

A former Tennessee Attorney General, W.J. Cody, and a U.S. Court of Appeals Judge, Gilbert Merritt, both members of the American Bar Association’s Tennessee Death Penalty Assessment Team, called on policymakers to thoroughly review the state’s capital punishment laws and implement significant changes that address concerns such as wrongful convictions, meeting the needs of victims’ family members, and ensuring that the state complies with minimum standards required for fairness in capital…

A shortage of state funds to pay defense attorneys, experts, and investigators has brought jury selection in the trial of Brian Nichols in Georgia to a halt. Superior Court Judge Hilton M. Fuller (pictured), Jr. stopped jury selection after just two days due to concerns that Nichols’ defense team did not have adequate funding to represent their client. His ruling came in response to a defense motion that noted, “[A]t this time, and for some period of time in the past, no defense experts have…

With the stays of execution in Virginia on October 17 and in Georgia on October 18, it appears likely that no more lethal injections will take place in this country until the U.S. Supreme Court renders a decision in Baze v. Rees, a case challenging the lethal injection process in Kentucky. Christopher Emmett in Virginia was granted a stay by the U.S. Supreme Court just hours before his execution. Jack Alderman’s lethal injection was stayed by the Georgia Supreme Court a day before it was to…

“Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir” by Stanley Tookie Williams is a first-hand account of Williams’ personal journey from co-founding the notorious Crips gang to becoming a reformed prisoner and activist for youth from behind bars on California’s death row. The book, which has an epilogue by Barbara Becnel and a foreward by Tavis Smiley, details how Williams became a powerful anti-gang activist during the two decades he spent on death row prior to his December 2005 execution. Williams’ book…

The FBI’s recently released Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the United States, 2006, revealed that the murder rate in 2006 rose slightly from 5.6 murders per 100,000 people in 2005 to 5.7 in 2006, but was at the same rate as in 1999 when use of the death penalty started to show marked declines. There has been little change in the murder rate in the intervening years when death sentences, executions, and the size of death row all declined. As in previous years, the South had the highest murder…