Publications & Testimony

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…

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…