Publications & Testimony

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 large­ly devel­oped with­out the input of…

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 homi­cide and sentenced to…

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 cor­rect­ness of the ana­lysts’ conclusions.”…

A recent op-ed by Theodore Shaw, pres­i­dent and direc­tor-coun­sel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, urged a full and fair inves­ti­ga­tion into the case of Ruben Cantu, a Texas man who may have been inno­cent of the mur­der for which he was exe­cut­ed in 1993. Shaw not­ed that Cantu’s case was ​“fraught with sys­temic errors,” includ­ing the fact that his con­vic­tion was based on a sin­gle eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion by a man who has said he was pres­sured by police. Shaw praised…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the La Crosse Tribune urged Wisconsin leg­is­la­tors to main­tain the state’s ban on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The edi­to­r­i­al dis­cour­aged the state from rein­stat­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment because it does not deter crime and is often unfair­ly applied, stat­ing that there is no need to bring back the death penal­ty because the state already has the sen­tence of life with­out parole. Legislators recent­ly vot­ed to hold a non-bind­ing ref­er­en­dum on restor­ing the death penal­ty, though the two…

Katherine Norgard’s recent book, ​“Hard to Place: A Crime of Alcohol,” is a per­son­al account of the trau­ma expe­ri­enced by her fam­i­ly when her adopt­ed son is charged with a cap­i­tal crime. The book is the author’s sto­ry of fight­ing to save her son after he was sen­tenced to death for the 1989 mur­der of an elder­ly cou­ple in Tuscon, Arizona. At the time of his tri­al, she still did not know that her son, John Eastlack, had been born with fetal alco­hol syn­drome, despite his signs of mental…

U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt over­turned the cap­i­tal con­vic­tion of Carl Wayne Buntion, not­ing that the Texas tri­al judge who sen­tenced him to death had a ​“deep-seat­ed and vocal bias” against Buntion. In a 61-page opin­ion, Hoyt stat­ed that state District Judge Bill Harmon deprived Buntion of his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to a fair tri­al by bul­ly­ing his attor­neys, meet­ing pri­vate­ly with pros­e­cu­tors and defer­ring to their wish­es, and mak­ing remarks in court such as he was ​“doing God’s work” by…

On May 2, 2006, the exe­cu­tion of Joseph Clark in Ohio was delayed 90 min­utes because the exe­cu­tion team was unable to find a suit­able vein to deliv­er the lethal chem­i­cals. After the team tried repeat­ed­ly to find a vein, Clark called out, ​“It’s not work­ing, it’s not work­ing.” The guards closed the cur­tains to block wit­ness­es from view­ing the exe­cu­tion cham­ber. Witnesses then heard Clark moan­ing and groan­ing from behind the cur­tain. The cur­tain lat­er reopened after the exe­cu­tion team managed to…

Amnesty International’s most recent death penal­ty report, ​“The Death Penalty Worldwide: Developments in 2005,” revealed a sub­stan­tial drop in record­ed exe­cu­tions around the world, as well as a grow­ing num­ber of nations that have aban­doned the death penal­ty. According to the report, four nations account­ed for 94% of the 2,148 record­ed exe­cu­tions car­ried out around the world in 2005, a total that is sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than the 3,797 exe­cu­tions record­ed in 2004 (how­ev­er, in many…

The May 8^th edi­tion of U.S. News & World Report high­lights the declin­ing num­ber of death sen­tences hand­ed down each year in the U.S., the small­er num­ber of exe­cu­tions, and the grow­ing num­ber of states that are re-eval­u­at­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Public sup­port for the death penal­ty has also decreased because of doubts about the accu­ra­cy and fairnes of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The arti­cle notes that New Jersey recent­ly estab­lished a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions and New York opt­ed not to restore its…