Publications & Testimony

Prosecutors in New Jersey announced that they were drop­ping all charges against Larry Peterson who had been con­vict­ed of mur­der in 1989, say­ing they could no longer meet their bur­den of proof in his case. Peterson’s con­vic­tion was over­turned last year after DNA tests failed to match him with evi­dence from the scene of the crime. The state had ini­tial­ly sought the death penal­ty against Peterson, who is now 55 after spend­ing 18 years in prison. The Innocence Project at Cardozo Law…

With the exe­cu­tion of Jesus Aguilar in Texas on May 24, there have now been 20…

John W. Whitehead, founder and pres­i­dent of the Rutherford Institute, called for clemen­cy for Percy Lavar Walton, a Virginia inmate sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on June 8. Walton is a psy­chot­ic schiz­o­phrenic who has suf­fered with severe men­tal ill­ness since ado­les­cence. He is on death row for three mur­ders he com­mit­ted when he was 18 years old. Whitehead writes: Dubbed​“Crazy Horse” by prison offi­cials, Walton … is scarce­ly con­scious of the…

Girvies Davis was exe­cut­ed in Illinois in 1995 after a con­vic­tion based large­ly on his own con­fes­sion. Davis’ appel­late attor­ney was David A. Schwartz, who now serves as senior vice-pres­i­­dent and base­ball legal coun­sel at CSMG Sports. Schwartz writes in the Chicago Tribune that Davis​“con­fessed” to many crimes, most of which he indis­putably did not com­mit. Davis said that the only rea­son he con­fessed to the mur­der that sent him to death row was that the police threatened…

Death penal­ty devel­op­ments in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Wisconsin have recent­ly been fea­tured in the news: The U.S. Supreme Court declined to con­sid­er the case of Abdur’Rahman v. Bredesen in which the Tennessee Supreme Court held that the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dure is con­sti­tu­tion­al under the Eighth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court’s action is no reflec­tion of their opin­ion on the mat­ter of lethal injec­tion. The Justices are currently reviewing…

An edi­to­r­i­al in the Asbury Park Press, a news­pa­per that for­mer­ly sup­port­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, called on New Jersey pol­i­cy­mak­ers to aban­don the state’s cost­ly death penal­ty and replace it with the​“sure and swift” sen­tence of life with­out parole. Stating that New Jersey has wast­ed mil­lions of dol­lars on the death penal­ty, but has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since it was rein­stat­ed in1982, the edi­to­r­i­al not­ed: Can it real­ly be 22 years since Robert O.

Five fed­er­al judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6^th Circuit dis­sent­ed from the Court’s denial of a stay of exe­cu­tion to Sedley Alley in Tennessee. (Alley was sub­se­quent­ly grant­ed a stay by the gov­er­nor on oth­er grounds.) Judge Boyce Martin, writ­ing for the dis­sent­ing judges, not­ed that many inmates around the coun­try were being grant­ed stays of exe­cu­tion after fil­ing chal­lenges to the lethal injec­tion process. Others rais­ing the same claims have been denied…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in Nature, the inter­na­tion­al week­ly jour­nal of sci­ence, called on sci­en­tists and doc­tors to refuse to par­tic­i­pate in executions: ​“Don’t advise, don’t pre­scribe, don’t inject. Let the death penal­ty die a nat­ur­al death.” Noting that courts are now con­sid­er­ing whether the death penal­ty by lethal injec­tion should be out­lawed as inhu­mane, the edi­to­r­i­al points out that the procedure was…

After spend­ing more than a decade in jail for a crime he did not com­mit, Douglas Arthur Warney has been exon­er­at­ed and will be freed from prison in New York based on DNA evi­dence. Police main­tained that Warney had con­fessed to the crime. Warney is a poor­ly edu­cat­ed man with a his­to­ry of delu­sions and suf­fer­ing from an advanced case of AIDS. He orig­i­nal­ly faced the death penal­ty for the 1996 stab­bing mur­der in Rochester, but was ulti­mate­ly con­vict­ed of second-degree…

According to a new report on the work per­formed by the Houston Crime Lab issued by inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tor Michael Bromwich, at least one cap­i­tal case is among the 43 DNA cas­es and 50 serol­o­gy cas­es processed at the lab since 1980 that have now been iden­ti­fied as hav­ing​“major issues.” This clas­si­fi­ca­tion is defined as​“prob­lems that raise sig­nif­i­cant doubt as to the reli­a­bil­i­tiy of the work per­formed, the valid­i­ty of the ana­lyt­i­cal results, or the…