Publications & Testimony

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…

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 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…

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…

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.