Publications & Testimony

As the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission con­tin­ued its review of the state’s law, the Asbury Park Press called for replac­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment with the sen­tence of life with­out parole. This would bet­ter serve the fam­i­lies of vic­tims, accord­ing to the edi­to­r­i­al, because the death penal­ty caus­es years of uncer­tain­ty with lit­tle prospect that the sen­tence will be car­ried out. The edi­to­r­i­al stat­ed:Reasons to drop death penal­ty Posted by the…

An eight-mem­ber pan­el con­vened by the American Bar Association and con­sist­ing of pros­e­cu­tors, defense lawyers, and judges con­clud­ed a two-year study of Florida​’s death penal­ty sys­tem. The pan­el unan­i­mous­ly pro­posed exten­sive changes to improve the accu­ra­cy and fair­ness of the state’s system. ​“Despite the best efforts of many leg­is­la­tors, judges and lawyers, much more needs to be done to ensure that Florida’s death penal­ty sys­tem avoids executing…

Chief Judge William Wilkins of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4^th Circuit recent­ly spoke about the death penal­ty to a gath­er­ing at the Charleston School of Law in South Carolina. He com­ment­ed that deci­­sion-mak­ers will have to eval­u­ate whether the pun­ish­ment is worth its increas­ing finan­cial costs. But he also not­ed how dif­fi­cult it is for a politi­cian to speak open­ly about this issue:​“I think polit­i­cal­ly, you’re not going to find a can­di­date run­ning on​‘Let’s do…

“Reflective Glass” is a new book by death row inmate G. Wilford Hathorn. The book is a col­lec­tion of fif­teen essays that deal with life on Texas’ death row from a pris­on­er’s per­spec­tive. The essays describe many aspects of death row life: the pain of los­ing friends through exe­cu­tion, the med­ical treat­ment of pris­on­ers, the monot­o­ny of liv­ing in a tiny cell, and the…

DPIC’s Lethal Injection Page ​“Volunteers” and the Need for Court Review A sen­tenc­ing that​“shocks the con­science” A recent deci­sion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit under­scored the respon­si­bil­i­ty that all courts, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the fed­er­al courts, have in ensur­ing that constitutional…

The New School in New York City is spon­sor­ing a research conference entitled ​“Punishment: The U.S. Record” to be held November 30 and December 1, 2006. The con­fer­ence will cov­er all aspects of impris­on­ment and pun­ish­ment in the U.S., but some speak­ers will focus on the death penal­ty. In par­tic­u­lar, John Donohue III will exam­ine recent deter­rence stud­ies and David Garland will dis­cuss the func­tion that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment serves in soci­ety. Other…

A fed­er­al District Court judge ruled that Missouri​’s pro­posed changes to its lethal injec­tion process still do not meet the con­sti­tu­tion­al requirments under the Eighth Amendment. Judge Fernando Gaitan ruled on September 12 that Missouri may use a doc­tor in good stand­ing to pre­side over exe­cu­tions rather than requir­ing a board-cer­ti­­fied anes­the­si­ol­o­gist, as he first ordered in the case of Michael Taylor. However, oth­er aspects of Missouri’s new pro­to­col still do…

Back From The Dead: One woman’s search for the men who walked off America’s death row is the sto­ry of 589 for­mer death row inmates who, through a lot­tery of fate, were giv­en a sec­ond chance at life in 1972 when the death penal­ty was abol­ished. Joan Cheever, a for­mer edi­tor of the National Law Journal, who also rep­re­sent­ed a death row inmate in Texas, trav­eled the coun­try inter­view­ing inmates who had been con­demned to death but whose sen­tences were reduced to…

The Justice Minister of Rwanda, Tharcisse Karugarama, announced that the coun­try will like­ly pass a law by December 2006 end­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. This move would allow Rwanda to try sus­pects charged with atroc­i­ties in the 1994 war who are cur­rent­ly in coun­tries that refuse to extra­dite pris­on­ers if they face the death penal­ty. Karugarama said that abo­li­tion was nec­es­sary in order to achieve a sense of clo­sure. Unless the coun­try abol­ish­es the death penalty,…

According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics Report released on September 10, vio­lent crime in the United States decreased slight­ly in 2005, con­tin­u­ing a decade-long trend in few­er vic­tim­iza­tions. Comparing two-year peri­ods, vio­lent crime was low­est in the Northeast region of the coun­try in 2004-05, and that region also expe­ri­enced the largest decrease in vio­lent crime from 2002-03 to 2004-05. Since 1993, vio­lent crime has decreased by about 58% in the U.S. The BJS survey of…