Publications & Testimony

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry have signed into law leg­is­la­tion that allows proseuc­tors to seek the death penal­ty for repeat child moles­ters. The new South Carolina law allows a death sen­tence if the accused has been twice con­vict­ed of rap­ing a child younger than 11-years-old. It also sets a 25-year manda­to­ry min­i­mum prison sen­tence for some sex offend­ers, man­dates that peo­ple con­vict­ed of crim­i­nal sex­u­al con­duct in the first…

An hour before the sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Virginia death row inmate Percy Levar Walton, Governor Tim Kaine (pic­tured) issued a tem­po­rary stay to allow time for an inde­pen­dent inquiry to deter­mine whether Walton is too men­tal­ly ill to be exe­cut­ed.​“Due to the his­to­ry of judi­cial con­cern about his men­tal sta­tus, the claims in Walton’s clemen­cy peti­tion are enti­tled to seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion. It would be impru­dent to either pro­ceed with the execution or…

The Virginia Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly over­turned a tri­al court’s deter­mi­na­tion that Daryl Atkins was not men­tal­ly retard­ed and that he was eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. Atkins’ 2002 appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court result­ed in the Court rul­ing that the exe­cu­tion of the men­tal­ly retard­ed is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, but the rul­ing left it up to states to define retar­da­tion and deter­mine the pro­ce­dures for estab­lish­ing this dis­abil­i­ty. Atkins’ case…

The lat­est edi­tion of the Amicus Journal is now avail­able and fea­tures arti­cles relat­ed to death penal­ty top­ics such as gen­der bias and jurors, as well as infor­ma­tion on inter­na­tion­al cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment devel­op­ments in the Caribbean and Africa. The jour­nal fea­tures a sto­ry on the Middle Temple Library’s Capital Punishment Collection in Great Britain, an archive of text­books, case-prepa­ra­­tion aides, film doc­u­men­taries, and oth­er pri­ma­ry sources on the death…

On June 6, the Philippine Senate vot­ed with no neg­a­tive votes to abol­ish the death penal­ty. Even sen­a­tors who sup­port­ed the death penal­ty vot­ed for abo­li­tion. Life with­out parole sen­tences or 40 years in prison will be sub­sti­tut­ed for exe­cu­tion, depend­ing on the offense. President Arroyo is strong­ly in favor of the effort to end the death penal­ty. Under the bill, all death sen­tences will be com­mut­ed to life sen­tences. One of the sen­a­tors who was hesitant about…

Although Scott Panetti has a long his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness and insists that Texas is work­ing in coop­er­a­tion with Satan to exe­cute him as a way to keep him from preach­ing the gospel, a three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has declared him sane enough to be exe­cut­ed. The pan­el acknowl­edged that Panetti is men­tal­ly ill and might lack a ratio­nal under­stand­ing of his fate, but main­tained that Panetti is able to under­stand the basis for his…

A May 2006 Gallup Poll exam­in­ing American opin­ion about the death penal­ty found that when giv­en a choice between the sen­tenc­ing options of life with­out parole and the death penal­ty, only 47% of respon­dents chose cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the low­est per­cent­age in two decades. Forty-eight per­cent favored life with­out parole for those con­vict­ed of mur­der. The poll also revealed that over­all sup­port for the death penal­ty remains low at 65%, down significantly from…

Reversing its long-stand­ing sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the Spokane Spokesman-Review recent­ly pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al call­ing for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States. The paper not­ed that the deci­sion to change its stance on the death penal­ty came after care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of grow­ing evi­dence that the news­pa­per’s​“expec­ta­tions of fair­ness and jus­tice” are not being met and that the death penal­ty’s​“draw­backs now out­weigh its merits.”…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s​“Death Row USA” shows that the num­ber of peo­ple on the death row in the United States is con­tin­u­ing to decline, falling to 3,370 as of April 1, 2006. The size of death row increased every year between 1976 and 2000, but since then it has been in…

There are cur­rent­ly 120 for­eign nation­als from 32 coun­tries on death rows across the U.S. These are indi­vid­u­als who have been con­demned to death in this coun­try but are not cit­i­zens of the U.S. In many cas­es, these defen­dants were not informed of their rights under Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. This treaty was signed and rat­i­fied by the U.S., but many defen­dants from coun­tries that are also par­ties to the Vienna Convention were not told…