Publications & Testimony

The British Privy Council in London unan­i­mous­ly struck down the impo­si­tion of manda­to­ry death sen­tences in the Bahamas. This land­mark deci­sion held that the law ​“should be con­strued as impos­ing a dis­cre­tionary and not a manda­to­ry sen­tence of death.” The Privy Council rul­ing said that the manda­to­ry death penal­ty should have been regard­ed as inhu­mane and degrad­ing pun­ish­ment as ear­ly as 1973. ​“The ram­i­fi­ca­tions and con­se­quences of the Privy Council’s rul­ing are huge; there are implications for…

Congress recent­ly passed the re-autho­riza­tion of the Patriot Act and this bill is like­ly to cur­tail the appeals of state death row inmates in fed­er­al courts. The leg­is­la­tion, which is due to be signed into law this week by President Bush, would allow states to obtain approval of their sys­tems of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in death penal­ty cas­es from the U.S. Attorney General rather than from the fed­er­al courts, as required under a pre­vi­ous law. Once approval is grant­ed, habeas corpus petitions…

Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a stay of exe­cu­tion for three co-defen­dants on fed­er­al death row who were sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in May. Judge Huvelle’s order delays the exe­cu­tions indef­i­nite­ly and is the result of a lethal injec­tion chal­lenge raised by the three men, James H. Roane Jr., Richard Tipton, and Cory Johnson. This case marks at least the sixth time since January that exe­cu­tions have been stayed after inmates…

Wounds That Do Not Bind: Victim-based Perspectives on the Death Penalty, a new book by James R. Acker and David Reed Karp, exam­ines how fam­i­ly mem­bers and advo­cates for vic­tims address the impact of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The book presents the per­son­al sto­ries of vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers and their inter­ac­tions with the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. It also exam­ines the rel­e­vant areas of legal research, includ­ing the use of vic­tim impact evi­dence in cap­i­tal tri­als, how capital punishment…

Prosecutors in Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware have all cho­sen to seek life sen­tences in three high-pro­file mur­der cas­es. Among oth­er con­cerns, they not­ed their wish to bring com­fort to vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and to secure the pub­lic’s longterm safe­ty. The pros­e­cu­tors expressed con­fi­dence that not seek­ing the death penal­ty was the right choice in these cas­es. Maryland pros­e­cu­tors announced that they will not seek the death penal­ty for sniper John Allen Muhammad, who will go on tri­al in May.

Californians’ sup­port for the death penal­ty is declin­ing accord­ing to results of a new sur­vey con­duct­ed in February 2006 by the Field Poll. The statewide poll revealed that only 63% of respon­dents favor keep­ing the death penal­ty for seri­ous crimes, a fig­ure that is low­er than the 72% sup­port for the death penal­ty mea­sured in 2002 and sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than the 83% who voiced sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in both 1985 and 1986. The sur­vey also found a grow­ing seg­ment of the population…

In his new book, Death by Design: Capital Punishment as a Social Psychological System, Craig Haney argues that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the events that lead to death sen­tenc­ing itself, are main­tained through a sys­tem that dis­tances and dis­en­gages peo­ple from the true nature of the task. Haney, a pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, relies on his own research and that oth­er of oth­er sci­en­tists in approach­ing the ques­tion, ​“How can normal,…

Lawyers and pros­e­cu­tors in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania say that con­cerns about inno­cence and shift­ing pub­lic atti­tudes on the death penal­ty have caused jurors in the coun­ty to ​“lose their taste” for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In each of the past 8 cap­i­tal cas­es tried, jurors spared the life of the defen­dant. ​“My per­son­al belief is that the heydey of the death penal­ty is over,” said Allegheny County attor­ney Caroline Roberto, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Pennsylvania Association of…

Pennsylvania death row inmate George E. Banks, who came with­in a day of being put to death in 2004, has been declared men­tal­ly incom­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed. ​“His long­stand­ing delu­sions ren­der him unable to ratio­nal­ly com­pre­hend his death sen­tence, its rea­sons or its impli­ca­tions. George Banks is a very men­tal­ly sick man,” stat­ed Luzerne County Judge Michael Conahan in his order. Banks was sen­tenced to death in 1983 for a shoot­ing spree that end­ed in 13 deaths, includ­ing five of his own…

The Florida Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly over­turned the con­vic­tion of death row inmate John Robert Ballard (pic­tured) and ordered his acquit­tal in the 1999 mur­ders of two of his acquain­tances. The Court con­clud­ed that the evi­dence against Ballard was so weak that the tri­al judge should have dis­missed the case imme­di­ate­ly. The pri­ma­ry evi­dence pre­sent­ed against Ballard was a hair and a fin­ger­print, both of which he could have left dur­ing his many vis­its to the vic­tims’ apart­ment. Bloody…