Publications & Testimony

Part One (Part Two Follows)October 9^th, 200610 days ago, by a vote of 65 to 34, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA). To facil­i­tate the pros­e­cu­tion of detainees that the Bush Administration​“dis­ap­peared” into secret CIA cus­tody for sev­er­al years, Congress cre­at­ed a sys­tem of jus­tice that is far infe­ri­or to that of the fed­er­al courts and courts-mar­­tial. And not only did Congress give the Administration much of what sought in terms of substandard…

Capital Punishment Research Initiative: The Future of Innocence by Richard C. Dieter (October…

Corey Maye was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of a police offi­cer in Prentiss, Mississippi, on the day after Christmas in 2001. The police offi­cer was part of a drug raid on a neigh­bor’s apart­ment. Maye claims that the police broke into his duplex unan­nounced and that he fired his gun in defense of him­self and his 18-month-old daugh­ter. Mississippi Circuit Court Judge Michael Eubanks recent­ly ruled that Maye was enti­tled to a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing because his…

A Los Angeles Times arti­cle on the recent hear­ings in fed­er­al District Court regard­ing the California’s lethal injec­tion process was enti­tled​“The Chaos Behind California Executions.” Excerpts from the…

On October 10^th, 2006, John Grisham​’s first non-fic­­tion book, The Innocent Man, will be released. The book is the com­pelling true sto­ry of Ron Williamson, a for­mer home­town base­ball hero of Ada, Oklahoma, who was con­vict­ed in 1988 of rap­ing and mur­der­ing Debbie Carter. In 1999, Williamson was exon­er­at­ed of the crime after serv­ing eleven years on death row. In the con­text of this case, Grisham address­es many of the fun­da­men­tal issues that sur­round the death…

Christopher Slobogin of the University of Florida’s Law School has writ­ten a new book about the state’s legal author­i­ty to deprive peo­ple with men­tal dis­abil­i­ties of life or lib­er­ty. The book dis­cuss­es a num­ber of well known cas­es such as that of John Hinckley and Andrea Yates. It also includes dis­cus­sion of laws deal­ing with the insan­i­ty defense, the death penal­ty, com­mit­ment of sex­u­al preda­tors, and hos­pi­tal­iza­tion of peo­ple con­sid­ered unable to make…

Monday, October 2, 2006The Chaos Behind California ExecutionsTrial tes­ti­mo­ny paints lethal injec­tion meth­ods as hap­haz­ard, with lit­tle med­ical over­sight.By Maura Dolan and Henry WeinsteinLos Angeles Times Staff WritersSAN JOSE — ​“Operational Procedure No. 770,” the state’s name for exe­cu­tion by lethal injec­tion, is per­formed in a dark, cramped room by men and women who know lit­tle, if any­thing, about the dead­ly drugs they inject under extreme…

One attor­ney’s appeal brief on behalf of a Texas death row inmate was so poor­ly writ­ten that State District Judge Noe Gonzalez of Edinburg wrote that​“Applicant total­ly mis­in­ter­prets what actu­al­ly occurred in this case.” A com­mit­tee of cit­i­zens and attor­neys filed a com­plaint about the appel­late lawyer with the State Bar of Texas, but noth­ing was done: the lawyer remains on the state’s list of approved death penal­ty attor­neys, and the client remains on death row. The…

The Charlotte School of Law is spon­sor­ing a symposium on ​“Mental Illness and the Death Penalty: Seeking a​‘Reasoned Moral Response’ to an Unavoidable Condition” on October 20, 2006 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The con­fer­ence will bring togeth­er med­ical experts, judges, defense attor­neys, pros­e­cu­tors, and oth­er experts to dis­cuss whether cur­rent law ade­quate­ly accounts for the role of men­tal ill­ness in cap­i­tal cas­es. Among those sched­uled to speak are…

The for­mer Director of the FBI, William Sessions (pic­tured), along with Timothy Lewis, a for­mer judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals, called on mem­bers of Congress to refrain from bar­ring death row inmates and oth­er defen­dants from the full access to the fed­er­al courts in their appeals. Some leg­is­la­tors have pro­posed elim­i­nat­ing fed­er­al habeas cor­pus review in many cas­es, and bar­ring access to the fed­er­al courts to many of those raising…