Publications & Testimony

According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics study released September 6, more than half of all prison and jail inmates, includ­ing 56% of state pris­on­ers, 45% of fed­er­al pris­on­ers, and 64% of local jail inmates have men­tal health prob­lems. The study was based on report­ing of symp­toms by inmates rather than through med­ical diag­no­sis. Among state pris­on­ers with men­tal prob­lems, 43% had symp­toms of mania, 23% had major depres­sion, and 15% had psy­chot­ic dis­or­ders. Having mental health…

The death penal­ty is rarely sought in the city of Baltimore, but in adjoin­ing Baltimore County almost every eli­gi­ble case becomes a cap­i­tal case. Presently, there are 7 active death-penal­ty cas­es in Baltimore County, more than the city of Baltimore has had over­all in the past 2 decades. In addi­tion to the dif­fer­ent philoso­phies of the respec­tive State’s Attorneys, the costs of the death penal­ty are a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor. Prosecutors esti­mate that a death penal­ty case costs tax­pay­ers $500,000,…

There have been 41 exe­cu­tions in 2006 as of September 5. This is a pace com­pa­ra­ble to last year’s, when there were 60 exe­cu­tions. Eighty per­cent of the exe­cu­tions have been in the South, keep­ing with a pat­tern since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976. Almost half of all exe­cu­tions (20 of 41) have been in one state, Texas. Only about 20% of those exe­cut­ed had killed a black vic­tim, even though about half of all mur­der vic­tims in the U.S. are black. This…

Anthony Graves, who was sen­tenced to death in Texas in 1994, may soon be released on bail. Graves’ con­vic­tion was over­turned in March 2006 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit because pros­e­cu­tors had with­held two pieces of impor­tant evi­dence from Graves’ attor­neys pri­or to his tri­al. One of the main wit­ness­es against Graves, a co-defen­dant who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the crime, recant­ed his ear­li­er tes­ti­mo­ny. The fed­er­al court has giv­en Texas until September 12, 2006…

Researcher and for­mer law pro­fes­sor Harriet C. Frazier has pro­duced a thor­ough inves­tiga­tive work on the death penal­ty in Missouri: Death Sentences in Missouri, 1803 – 2005: A History and Comprehensive Registry of Legal Executions, Pardons, and Commutations. Building on the research of Watt Espy, Frazier dis­cov­ered accounts of many addi­tion­al exe­cu­tions in the state, espe­cial­ly in its ear­li­er years. She devotes chap­ters to such impor­tant areas as exe­cu­tions of Native Americans, blacks,…

Gov. Mike Rounds of South Dakota stayed the exe­cu­tion of Elijah Page on the day it was to be car­ried out because of con­cerns about the state’s lethal injec­tion process. The gov­er­nor said there was a con­flict between state law requir­ing the use of two drugs, and the antic­i­pat­ed prac­tice of using three drugs in the lethal injec­tion. Such a prac­tice could put state employ­ees at risk of vio­lat­ing the law. Page had waived his appeals, but oth­er inmates had raised chal­lenges to the…

In a recent edi­to­r­i­al, the Washington Post called atten­tion to the case of Earl Washington, who was wrong­ly con­vict­ed and almost exe­cut­ed in Virginia before being freed fol­low­ing DNA tests. The edi­to­r­i­al notes that even a con­fes­sion is far from defin­i­tive proof that the right per­son has been con­vict­ed. Washington was spared through the clemen­cy process after courts denied his claims. Now a new defen­dant, whose DNA matched evi­dence from the crime scene, has been…

A new study on the use of the death penal­ty in Trinidad and Tobago has been pub­lished by Roger Hood and Florence Seemungal. The authors close­ly exam­ine pros­e­cu­tions under the coun­try’s manda­to­ry death penal­ty statute, which requires impo­si­tion of a death sen­tence when­ev­er a defen­dant is found guilty of mur­der. The study found that, despite a high num­ber of killings, rel­a­tive­ly few peo­ple were con­vict­ed of mur­der, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those who com­mit­ted the most heinous crimes.The authors note…

Justin Fuller was exe­cut­ed in Texas on August 24. He was the 19^th per­son exe­cut­ed this year, equal­ing the total num­ber of peo­ple exe­cut­ed last year in the state. The San Antonio Express-News report­ed that Fuller had been rep­re­sent­ed by an attor­ney who ​“filed an appeal with inco­her­ent rep­e­ti­tions, ram­bling argu­ments and lan­guage clear­ly lift­ed from one of his pre­vi­ous cas­es, so that at one point it described the wrong crime.“The appeal filed for Fuller copied word­ing that the attorney had…

A sophis­ti­cat­ed sta­tis­ti­cal study of homi­cide cas­es in South Carolina by Professor Isaac Unah of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and attor­ney Michael Songer found that pros­e­cu­tors were more like­ly to seek the death penal­ty when the vic­tim in the under­ly­ing mur­der was white, if the vic­tim was female, and when the crime occurred in a rur­al area of the state. The authors first exam­ined the raw data of homi­cide cas­es in South Carolina over a 5‑year period and…