Publications & Testimony

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row USA shows an 8% decline in the coun­try’s death row pop­u­la­tion dur­ing the past 5 years, down from 3,652 in 2000 to 3,373 at the end of 2005. According to the report, California con­tin­ues to have the nation’s largest death row pop­u­la­tion (649), fol­lowed by Texas (409), Florida (388), Pennsylvania (231), and Ohio…

Former spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Kenneth Starr recent­ly voiced con­cerns about the way the death penal­ty is being applied. Starr, who now serves as Dean of the Pepperdine Law School, is assist­ing in the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of death row inmate Michael Morales. Morales is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on February 21 in California. Starr said,​“Society is not equipped to han­dle death penal­ty cas­es because of resources. Large law firms are not will­ing at this stage to take these cas­es on, at…

An edi­to­r­i­al in the Austin-American Statesman praised the rec­om­men­da­tions of the gov­er­nor’s advi­so­ry coun­cil on crim­i­nal jus­tice, espe­cial­ly in regard to changes need­ed in the death penal­ty sys­tem. Excerpts from the…

Ruling that the cur­rent mix of drugs used to car­ry out California’s lethal injec­tions may con­sti­tute cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel has ordered California to alter its lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures before it car­ries out the sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Michael Morales on February 21. Fogel, who said he is trou­bled by the prospect that inmates may be con­scious and under­go­ing extreme pain once a par­a­lyz­ing agent and then a heart-stop­ping drug are…

An exhib­it fea­tur­ing artist Taryn Simon’s 45 pho­to­graph­ic por­traits of indi­vid­u­als freed by DNA evi­dence is on dis­play at Provisions Library in Washington, DC, from February 11 to April 15, 2006. During the D.C. exhib­it, which is part of a trav­el­ing exhi­bi­tion curat­ed by Umbrage Editions to mark the 10^th anniver­sary of the New York City-based Innocence Project, a series of relat­ed events will also be offered to more close­ly exam­ine the issue of wrongful…

Steven P. Grossman, a for­mer New York City pros­e­cu­tor and a pro­fes­sor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, recent­ly wrote in The Baltimore Sun that the death penal­ty is​“not worth the soci­etal effort it requires and the wounds it caus­es.” The case of Maryland death row inmate Vernon Evans,who received a stay jsut pri­or to his sched­uled exe­cu­tion this month, prompt­ed Grossman to exam­ine cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as it relates to vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and whether…

All states and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment use lethal injec­tion as their pri­ma­ry method of exe­cu­tion. States use a vari­ety of pro­to­cols using one, two, or three drugs. The three-drug pro­to­col uses an anes­thet­ic or seda­tive, typ­i­cal­ly fol­lowed by pan­curo­ni­um bro­mide to par­a­lyze the inmate and potas­si­um chlo­ride to stop the inmate’s heart. The one or two-drug pro­to­cols typ­i­cal­ly use a lethal dose of an…

ABA REPORT CALLS FOR GEORGIA DEATH…

The most recent edi­tion of the Amicus Journal, a London pub­li­ca­tion that pro­vides a forum for dia­logue on issues con­cern­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment around the world, con­tains arti­cles address­ing U.S. death penal­ty con­cerns. Among the top­ics cov­ered are clemen­cy, men­tal retar­da­tion, con­di­tions on death row, inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel, and lethal injec­tion. The mag­a­zine fea­tures pieces by a num­ber of U.S. death penal­ty experts, includ­ing an essay on…

Delaware state pros­e­cu­tors announced that they will not seek the death penal­ty for Thomas Capano, a for­mer mil­lion­aire influ­en­tial in state pol­i­tics who was con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Anne Marie Fahey. Capano will instead face a sen­tence of life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. ​“Every crim­i­nal case has a nat­ur­al end. We have reached that point in this case. I am sat­is­fied that jus­tice is served by hav­ing Thomas Capano spend every day of the rest of his…