Publications & Testimony

According to a new report from a team of investigators sponsored by the American Bar Association (ABA), flaws in Pennsylvania’s death penalty system are so pervasive that the state risks executing an innocent person. “The problems found in this assessment strike at the very heart of Pennsylvania’s justice system,” stated ABA president-elect H. Thomas Wells, Jr. The five-member Pennsylvania assessment team that conducted the review urged a series of important death penalty reforms designed to…

Member nations of the European Union and the Council of Europe marked October 10^th as “European Day Against the Death Penalty,” an action to underscore the continent’s firm commitment to ending executions throughout the world. Leaders from the EU and the Council of Europe launched the initative during an October 9^th conference in Lisbon, Portugal. On October 10 in New York at the United Nations, a press conference also marked the “World Day Against the Death Penalty” with international human…

MORE STAYS GRANTED On October 24, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit granted a stay of execution to Daniel Siebert, who was to be executed in Alabama on Oct. 25. On Oct. 22, the Georgia Supreme Court granted another stay, this time to Curtis Osborne. These stays are related to the issue of lethal injection as the U.S. Supreme Court considers the matter. “A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH:” NEWS SERIES REVEALS ARBITRARY DEATH PENALTY IN GEORGIA According to “A Matter of Life or Death,” a…

A new report released by Amnesty International, Execution by lethal injection — a quarter century of state poisoning, calls on medical professionals to refuse to participate in executions and details ongoing concerns about current lethal injection protocols that could result in inmates feeling excruciating pain during their executions. “Governments are putting doctors and nurses in an impossible position by asking them to do something that goes against their ethical oath. … Medical…

In a recent meeting with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board, Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst (pictured) urged legislators to re-examine the state law that allows an accomplice to be tried by the same judge and jury as the shooter in murder cases, adding that he agreed with Governor Rick Perry’s decision to commute Kenneth Eugene Foster’s death sentence to life in prison based on similar concerns. Dewhurst also called on legislators to establish a state innocence commission to study…

A recent edition of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review features articles about the impact of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) in limiting appeals by prisoners and death row inmates. AEDPA was enacted in 1996, and Harvard Law School sponsored a symposium marking the legislation’s tenth anniversary. One article by Bryan Stevenson, Director of the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative, “Confronting Mass Imprisonment and Restoring Fairness to Collateral…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has granted a stay of execution to Heliberto Chi, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s lead after it decided to review Kentucky’s lethal injection procedures. Chi was scheduled to be executed on October 3. Attorneys for both the prosecution and defense said that the stay signals a probable slowdown, if not a complete shutdown, of executions in Texas until the Supreme Court issues a decision in the lethal injection case. Andrea Keilen, executive director of the…

In an editorial that followed a four-part news series reviewing death penalty-eligible murder cases in Georgia between 1995 and 2004, the Atlanta Journal Constitution called on the state to abandon capital punishment because death sentences are often unfairly influenced by geography, a prosecutor’s personal politics, or the victim’s race. The paper also said that Georgia fails to meet minimum standards to ensure an accurate and fair capital punishment system, noting: For criminal cases…

On October 10, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Medellin v. Texas, a case that will determine whether President Bush overstepped his authority by ordering state courts to comply with a 2004 International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling. The case involves Texas death row inmate Jose Medellin, one of 51 Mexican foreign nationals who were denied their right to contact Mexican consular officials after their arrest. The ICJ’s 2004 ruling called on U.S. courts to review the cases in light…

In the wake of more than 200 exonerations based on DNA evidence, including some wrongfully convicted death row prisoners, jurisdictions throughout the U.S. are enacting key policy reforms that add safeguards to protect against wrongful convictions and provide inmates with better access to crucial evidence during appeals. All but eight states now give inmates varying degrees of access to DNA evidence that might not have been available at the time of their convictions, and many states are…