Publications & Testimony

A fed­er­al judge pre­sid­ing over the Aryan Brotherhood mur­der tri­al in Santa Ana, California, has ruled that the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which requires that defen­dants be giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­front and cross exam­ine wit­ness­es tes­ti­fy­ing against them at tri­al, applies to at least part of the fed­er­al death penal­ty sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dure as well. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2004 in Crawford v. Washington that tes­ti­mo­ni­al evidence from…

The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty was cre­at­ed in Rome on May 12, 2002, and con­sists of 52 orga­ni­za­tions through­out the world: NGOs, attor­neys’ asso­ci­a­tions, trade unions, local com­mu­ni­ties, and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions (includ­ing many that are active in the U.S.) chal­leng­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The Coalition has cho­sen October 10, 2006 as the day to put par­tic­u­lar focus on prob­lems with the death penalty…

The British Government plans to seek Parliamentary approval of a par­don for more than 300 sol­diers exe­cut­ed for mil­i­tary offens­es dur­ing World War I. The announce­ment came just after a par­don was revealed for Private Harry Farr, who was exe­cut­ed at age 25 for refus­ing to fight. Defense Secretary…

South Dakota has sched­uled the exe­cu­tion of Elijah Page for August 28. If this exe­cu­tion goes for­ward, it will mark the fifth inmate in the past six weeks who waived his appeals and was then exe­cut­ed. This will also be the first exe­cu­tion in South Dakota in 59 years. About 12% of those who have been exe­cut­ed since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976 have vol­un­tar­i­ly waived appeals that would like­ly have delayed their exe­cu­tion.Such executions raise…

A sym­po­sium entitled ​“The Next Generation of Death Penalty Research: Priorities, Strategies, and an Agenda” will be spon­sored by the Capital Punishment Research Initiative of the State University of New York in Albany on October 6 & 7, 2006. Speakers will explore con­tem­po­rary death penal­ty laws and prac­tices, and the role of empir­i­cal research in chang­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment poli­cies. Included in an exten­sive list of impres­sive speak­ers are: David Baldus of the…

The August 2006 edi­tion of the National Geographic Magazine con­tains a chart illus­trat­ing the prob­a­bil­i­ties of dying from par­tic­u­lar caus­es. For exam­ple, the chances of dying from heart dis­ease are 1 in 5. The chances of dying in a motor vehi­cle acci­dent dur­ing one’s life­time are 1 in 84. Far down in the list is the chance of dying by legal exe­cu­tion: 1 in 62,468. The very next item in the list is dying by a stroke of light­ning: 1 in 79,746.In 1972, in his…

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, togeth­er with the Federalist Society and the Constitution Project, recent­ly spon­sored a pan­el in Washington, D.C., exam­in­ing the appli­ca­tion, moral­i­ty and con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty in the United States. The pan­el was mod­er­at­ed by Virginia Sloan of the Constitution Project and fea­tured Samuel Millsap, Jr., for­mer Texas District…

The American Bar Association passed a res­o­lu­tion on August 8 at its annu­al con­fer­ence rec­om­mend­ing that juris­dic­tions refrain from sen­tenc­ing to death or exe­cut­ing indi­vid­u­als with severe men­tal dis­or­ders. Using lan­guage adopt­ed ear­li­er by the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association, the res­o­lu­tion assert­ed that defen­dants should not be exe­cut­ed or sen­tenced to death if, at the time of the offense, they…

Samuel Flippen is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on August 18 in North Carolina for the 1994 death of his two-year-old step-daugh­­ter, Britnie Hutton. On the day of Britnie’s death, Flippen made emer­gency 911 calls seek­ing med­ical atten­tion for her. There had been no his­to­ry of him pre­vi­ous­ly injur­ing Britnie. Defense attor­neys claim that Flippen’s actions pre­ced­ing Britnie’s death are strong evi­dence that he had no inten­tion of harm­ing his step-daugh­­ter. The attorneys are…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit over­turned the death sen­tence of an Ohio man con­vict­ed in a 1995 con­tract killing, stat­ing that the death sen­tence was arbi­trary because oth­er equal­ly cul­pa­ble defen­dants received less­er sen­tences. While three oth­er defen­dants were sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment, only nine­­teen-year-old Jason Getsy was…