Publications & Testimony

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…

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 end­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, Sen.

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 exe­cu­tion. The full court…

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 1994 when 80% supported capital…