Publications & Testimony

July 2, 2006 will mark the 30^th anniver­sary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Gregg v. Georgia, an his­toric rul­ing that upheld new­ly craft­ed death penal­ty statutes and sig­naled the begin­ning of the mod­ern era of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. This mile­stone presents the pub­lic with an oppor­tu­ni­ty to exam­ine the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty over the past three decades and to test whether the Court’s expec­ta­tion of a fair­er and less arbi­trary sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has been ful­filled. As…

The U.S. Supreme has expand­ed the abil­i­ty of death row inmates to chal­lenge their con­vic­tions in fed­er­al court based on DNA evi­dence pro­duced long after their tri­als. The rul­ing marks the first time that the Justices have con­sid­ered the new evi­den­tiary tech­nol­o­gy of DNA evi­dence when re-exam­in­ing a death sen­tence. In its 5 – 3 deci­sion, the Court held that new evi­dence, includ­ing DNA test results, raised suf­fi­cient doubt to mer­it a new hear­ing in fed­er­al court for Tennessee death row inmate…

Recent edi­to­ri­als in The Washington Post and Roanoke Times praised Virginia Governor Tim Kaine’s deci­sion to delay the exe­cu­tion of Percy Walton in order to ensure that he is sane enough to exe­cute. The papers not­ed that Kaine’s deci­sion, which drew crit­i­cism from some death penal­ty advo­cates, demon­strat­ed ​“com­pe­tence in law­ful­ly apply­ing the death penal­ty” and was…

The U.S. Supreme Court has unan­i­mous­ly ruled that death row inmates seek­ing to chal­lenge lethal injec­tion as a method of exe­cu­tion after they have exhaust­ed their reg­u­lar appeals may pur­sue the issue as a civ­il rights claim. Though the deci­sion in Hill v. McDonough did not answer the broad­er ques­tion regard­ing whether the chem­i­cals used in lethal injec­tions around the nation are uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because they may cause excru­ci­at­ing pain, it does per­mit inmates to chal­lenge lethal injection…

Monday, June 12, 2006BY RICHARD D.

A new report issued by the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project found that Alabama’s death penal­ty fails to meet fun­da­men­tal ABA stan­dards of fair­ness and accu­ra­cy. An eight-mem­ber assess­ment team assem­bled in Alabama by the ABA was so trou­bled by its find­ings that it called for a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the state. The team urged law­mak­ers to take action to ensure effec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion at every stage of the cap­i­tal process, to protect…

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 degree wear an electronic…

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 grant clemen­cy without further…

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 was then sent back to the York County…

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 penal­ty. The Amicus Journal…