Publications & Testimony

The U.S. Supreme Court, with Justice Samuel Alito writ­ing his first opin­ion, unan­i­mous­ly ruled on May 1 that South Carolina had deprived Bobbie Lee Holmes of a fair tri­al when it pre­vent­ed him from putting on evi­dence con­tra­dic­to­ry to the state’s case and that point­ed to anoth­er pos­si­ble sus­pect. South Carolina’s rule was that if the state had put on strong foren­sic evi­dence of the defen­dan­t’s guilt, the defen­dant could be pro­hib­it­ed from raising an…

“A Meal to Die For” is a short sto­ry by Professor Robert Johnson exam­in­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment through the eyes of a man approach­ing his exe­cu­tion. The sto­ry is part of The Crying Wall and Other Prison Stories, a larg­er col­lec­tion of short sto­ries by a vari­ety of authors. In​“A Meal to Die For,” Johnson weaves the death row pris­on­er’s last meal with the grad­ual process of lethal injec­tion, result­ing in a painful death. Robert Johnson is…

“Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes” con­tains new research on race con­duct­ed by pro­fes­sors from Stanford, UCLA, Yale and Cornell, led by Prof. Jennifer Eberhardt. The arti­cle, to be pub­lished in the May 2006 edi­tion of Psychological Science, exam­ines whether the like­li­hood of being sen­tenced to death is influ­enced by the degree to which…

Two of the lead­ing cas­es chal­leng­ing the lethal injec­tion process as a civ­il rights vio­la­tion were sig­nif­i­cant­ly delayed to allow the par­ties more time to gath­er infor­ma­tion. In California, the fed­er­al District Court over­see­ing the case of Michael Morales post­poned the sched­uled May 2 hear­ing until September 19, 2006. In Missouri, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit grant­ed a 60-day exten­sion for dis­cov­ery and a hear­ing in the case of Michael Taylor.

On April 11, Texas Judge Wayne Salvant ruled that death row inmate Steven Kenneth Staley could be phys­i­cal­ly forced to take anti-psy­­chot­ic med­ica­tion that could ren­der him com­pe­tent enough to be exe­cut­ed. The deci­sion came near­ly two months after the judge stopped Staley’s sched­uled exe­cu­tion fol­low­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from two doc­tors who stat­ed that Staley suf­fers from para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia and is too men­tal­ly ill to be exe­cut­ed. The law requires that Staley be…

A new report issued by Human Rights Watch notes that most U.S. states use exe­cu­tion meth­ods that need­less­ly risk excru­ci­at­ing pain for inmates sub­ject­ed to lethal injec­tions. The report exam­ines the his­to­ry of lethal injec­tions and the wide­spread use of pro­to­cols that were cre­at­ed three decades ago with no sci­en­tif­ic research.Excerpts from the report: Although sup­port­ers of lethal injec­tion believe the pris­on­er dies pain­less­ly, there is mounting…

Daryl Mack, who repeat­ed­ly not­ed that he would rather be exe­cut­ed than spend the next 20 years of his life on death row pur­su­ing legal appeals, was exe­cut­ed Wednesday for a 1988 mur­der in Reno. Mack was con­vict­ed in 2002. He was the 12^th per­son exe­cut­ed in Nevada since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed in 1977, and the 11^th to waive remain­ing appeals at the time of exe­cu­tion. He was the first black man to be exe­cut­ed in the Nevada since exe­cu­tions resumed in…

A May 2006 con­fer­ence held at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School exam­ined new research, legal defense, and pub­lic response to the issue of race and the death penal­ty. The conference, ​“From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: A National Conference on Race and the Death Penalty,” fea­tured a num­ber of nation­al aca­d­e­m­ic and legal…

The per­cent­age of fed­er­al death penal­ty cas­es result­ing in death sen­tences has declined from the 1990s to the present. Since 1991, juries chose a death sen­tence in 51 cas­es com­pared with 93 cas­es that end­ed with a sen­tence of life in prison, accord­ing to Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel, a rate of 35% for death sen­tences. Since 2000, juries have returned 29 death sen­tences and 69 life sen­tences, a rate…

Marking the 50^th anniver­sary of the United Methodist Church’s pub­lic call for an end to the death penal­ty, the church’s General Board of Church and Society recent­ly issued a state­ment echo­ing the sen­ti­ments of the church’s orig­i­nal call for abo­li­tion and urg­ing all United Methodists​“to prac­tice trans­for­ma­tive love, to com­fort the vic­tims of crime, to human­ize those con­vict­ed of crime, and to advo­cate for an end to the death penal­ty in our criminal justice…