Publications & Testimony

Judge Boyce F. Martin, Jr. (pictured) of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6^th Circuit called the death penalty “arbitrary, biased, and so fundamentally flawed at its very core that it is beyond repair.” Judge Martin dissented in the case of Getsy v. Mitchell and said it made no sense that Jason Getsy received a death sentence for his role in a murder-for-hire conspiracy, while the other two triggermen and the mastermind of the crime, all escaped a death sentence. He wrote: In Jason Getsy’s…

A federal judge ordered the U.S. government to pay a record $102 million for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s role in the wrongful murder convictions of four men in 1968, including one man who was sentenced to death. U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner said the FBI’s conduct was “shocking” and characterized the government’s explanation for the events leading to the wrongful convictions of Louis Greco, Henry Tameleo, Peter Limone and Joseph Salvati as “absurd.” She wrote, “Now is the time to…

In continuing a series that DPIC had highlighted earlier, the Denver Post has featured more than a dozen news articles and a series of online videos, providing an in-depth look at the handling of crucial biological evidence gathered during criminal investigations. “Trashing the Truth: The Hidden Story of Lost Evidence” examined the nationwide problems with evidence storage, the destruction of evidence, and the relationship between missing evidence and wrongful convictions. It also addressed how…

An updated version of the “Espy File,” a database of executions in the United States and the earlier colonies from 1608 to 2002, is now available on DPIC’s Web site. This resource provides detailed information about each of the 15,269 executions recorded during this period and offers a unique glimpse into the history of the death penalty in the U.S. For example, about 15% of those executed received the death penalty for crimes other than murder, including 277 who were executed for slave revolt…

Judge Carven Angel of Florida’s Circuit Court has ordered a halt to executions because of concerns that the state’s new lethal injection protocols do not adequately address problems exposed in the state’s last execution. The new protocols were created after Florida’s botched execution of Angel Diaz in December 2006. The execution took more than 30 minutes after two tries, and then-governor Jeb Bush ordered a review of the process. Judge Angel’s oral order to stop executions came on Sunday, July…

A recent four-part series in the Denver Post about evidence in criminal cases detailed how police departments across the U.S. store and dispose of crucial biological evidence. The Post examined 10 states in which authorities destroyed biological evidence in nearly 6,000 rape and murder cases during the past decade. The investigation also revealed that over the past 30 years, destruction of DNA evidence in 28 states has undermined efforts by at least 141 prisoners to prove their innocence. Of…

A new comprehensive study of 200 innocence cases, all involving people who were exonerated by DNA evidence, found that erroneous identification by eyewitnesses, faulty forensic evidence, inaccurate informant testimony, and false confessions were the key problems that led to these serious mistakes. The research — which included 14 death penalty cases — also found that courts performed miserably in identifying cases of innocence, and that those exonerated were more likely to be members of…

In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Ring v. Arizona that the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a jury trial included the determination of whether sufficient aggravating factors existed to make a defendant eligible for the death penalty. Now, five years later, the man at the center of this case — Timothy Ring — has been re-sentenced to life without parole. Ring’s case is among 27 Arizona death penalty cases affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling and re-examinated by the Arizona Supreme…

Uneven Justice: State Rates of Incarceration by Race and Ethnicity is a new report by The Sentencing Project that examines the racial and ethnic dynamics of incarceration in the U.S. with tables by state and by race. The report notes that African Americans are incarcerated at nearly 6 times the rate of whites and Hispanics are incarcerated at nearly double the rate of whites. One in nine (11.7%) African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 is currently incarcerated in a prison or jail.