Publications & Testimony

“Justice Talking” on National Public Radio recently addressed current death penalty issues, including an examination of the controversy surrounding lethal injections. The program, which is available online, featured an overview of the U.S. death penalty by professor John Blume, founder and director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project at Cornell University, and an interview with Deborah Denno, a professor of law at Fordham University who is one of the nation’s leading scholars on the death…

Pennsylvania has convened a commission of judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement officers and victims’ advocates to study the causes of wrongful convictions and make recommendations for preventing them in the state. Forensic errors, mistaken eyewitness identifications and false confessions have led to wrongful convictions around the nation, including 9 people from Pennsylvania who have been exonerated by DNA evidence. The commission of 40 members was sponsored by Pennsylvania…

In 2006, U.S. District Judge Malcolm J. Howard allowed two men to be executed by lethal injection after prison officials indicated that a physician and a nurse at the execution would monitor a type of brain-wave machine to ensure that the inmates were unconscious and not in pain when the paralyzing and heart-stopping drugs were injected. However, a deposition given in November 2006 by Central Prison warden Marvin Polk (pictured) is now raising questions about whether the judge was misled. In…

The Global Debate on the Death Penalty by Sandra Babcock, Human Rights, American Bar Association, Spring 2007 • Vol. 34, No. 2 Richard Cohen, “Let Saddam Live.” Washington Post, December 18, 2003 Richard Dieter, “International Influence on the Death Penalty in the U.S.” Foreign Service Journal, October 2003. Shapiro, Bruce, “Dead Reckoning” The Nation, August 6, 2001. Dorf, Michael, “When U.S. states execute citizens of other countries,: The Case of Gerardo Valdez” Findlaw.com (Legal…

The Justice Project, in conjunction with The Justice Project Education Fund, has issued two comprehensive policy reviews designed to facilitate communication among local law enforcement agencies, policymakers, practitioners, and others who are concerned about the issues of eyewitness identification and the electronic recording of custodial interrogations. The reviews examine each of these issues and identify pitfalls and “best practices” with the latest research behind them. The reviews also…

“Sacco and Vanzetti” is an 80-minute-long documentary that tells the story of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants who were accused of a murder in 1920, and executed in Boston in 1927 after a controversial trial. It is the first major documentary film about this landmark story, which came to symbolize the bias against immigrants by some in America. At the time of their execution, millions of people in the U.S. and around the world protested on their behalf, and now…

Jim Davidsaver, a 20-year veteran with the Lincoln Police Department in Nebraska, recently wrote a column outlining his support for legislation that would have repealed the state’s death penalty. Davidsaver said he supported the measure, which failed to pass into law, because the death penalty does not deter crime and is too expensive. He noted that in his years of service with the police force he witnessed many horrific crime scenes, but none of the accused murderers was ever deterred by the…

Alabama is the only state that does not provide attorneys for indigent death row inmates throughout their state appeal. Lawyers representing some of those on death row in the state will soon ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case challenging this practice. The attorneys will ask the Court to determine whether people facing execution have a constitutional right to an attorney as part of their right of meaningful access to the courts. Alabama maintains that it should be able to go it alone in…

Prior to their dismissals, three federal prosecutors whose firings are under scrutiny by Congress were engaged in a struggle with the Justice Department over its expanded pursuit of the federal death penalty. Paul Charlton of Arizona, Margaret Chiara of Michigan, and Kevin Ryan of California were all criticized by Justice officials for failing to seek death sentences as part of a broader use of the federal death penalty begun by former Attorney General John Ashcroft and continued by Alberto…

After decades of maintaining a position that the government should have the legal right to impose capital punishment, the Chicago Tribune is now calling for abolition of the death penalty. Noting concerns about innocence, the arbitrary nature of the punishment, and the public’s shift away from the death penalty, the Tribune announced on March 25 that, “The evidence of mistakes, the evidence of arbitrary decisions, the sobering knowledge that government can’t provide certainty that the innocent…