Publications & Testimony

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 edi­to­r­i­al in full: It took Jermaine…

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 a slow…

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 of their right to…

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 School in New…

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

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 fate that awaits…

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 to kill him if he did…

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 a sep­a­rate case that…

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. Marshall cow­ard­ly hired hit men to shoot…