Publications & Testimony

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 clemen­cy by Austin Sarat and a…

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 life in prison,” said…

An arti­cle in the Science sec­tion of the N.Y. Times reports on research con­duct­ed by psy­chol­o­gists at Stanford University on the effects of exe­cu­tions on prison staff. After inter­view­ing near­ly 250 prison staff mem­bers from three states, the researchers con­clud­ed that those who par­tic­i­pate in exe­cu­tion teams exhib­it high lev­els of ​“moral dis­en­gage­ment,” which one of the researchers described as the ​“abil­i­ty to selec­tive­ly engage and dis­en­gage our moral stan­dards.” The study found that the…

Supplement Letter for the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights’ Hearing on the Death Penalty (Feb. 7,…

The Constitution Project​’s blue-rib­bon Death Penalty Initiative released a new report, ​“Mandatory Justice: The Death Penalty Revisited,” an updat­ed set of guid­ing prin­ci­ples for reform of death penal­ty sys­tems. The group is com­prised of cur­rent and for­mer FBI offi­cials, state attor­neys gen­er­al, reli­gious lead­ers, vic­tims of crime, aca­d­e­mics, legal experts, and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers. They iden­ti­fied spe­cif­ic improve­ments to address prob­lems such as arbitrariness,…

A new report issued by Amnesty International found that at least 10% of the first 1,000 peo­ple exe­cut­ed in the United States since 1977 were severe­ly men­tall ill. The report not­ed that the National Association of Mental Health esti­mates that between five and 10% of the 3,400 peo­ple on death row around the coun­try are men­tal­ly ill. Amnesty said that states are fail­ing to address seri­ous men­tal health issues before crimes…

A new report by the American Bar Association Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project found that Georgia’s death penal­ty fails to meet 43 ABA stan­dards for improv­ing the fair­ness and accu­ra­cy of the death penal­ty. The assess­ment team assem­bled in Georgia by the ABA was so trou­bled by its find­ings that it called for a mora­to­ri­um on not only exe­cu­tions but also the pros­e­cu­tion of death penal­ty cas­es, and urged the state to study prob­lems such as inad­e­quate fund­ing for defense counsel,…

Pennsylvania State Representative Michael McGeehan, a tough-on-crime law­mak­er from Philadelphia, who ear­li­er had pushed for expe­dit­ed exe­cu­tions, now regrets that stance. He is spon­sor­ing leg­is­la­tion that would com­pen­sate those who have been wrong­ly con­vict­ed. McGeehan’s bill, which would also imme­di­ate­ly expunge a wrong­ly con­vict­ed per­son­’s crim­i­nal record, was prompt­ed by his out­rage at the num­ber of peo­ple who have been wrong­ly con­vict­ed and released from…

More than two decades after Ventura County Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath con­demned Michael Morales to die, McGrath is ask­ing California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemen­cy because the con­vic­tion was like­ly based on false tes­ti­mo­ny from a jail­house infor­mant. Morales is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on February 21. McGrath’s let­ter was includ­ed in a clemen­cy peti­tion filed by Morales’ attor­neys, David Senior and Kenneth W. Starr, dean of Pepperdine Law School and a former…

A new edi­tion of the Stanford Law Review con­tains an arti­cle enti­tled Uses and Abuses of Empirical Evidence in the Death Penalty Debate. The arti­cle exam­ines and per­forms com­par­i­son tests on recent stud­ies that have claimed a deter­rent effect to the death penal­ty. Authors John J. Donohue of Yale Law School and Justin Wolfers of the University of Pennsylvania state their goal and con­clu­sions: (O)ur aim in this Article is to pro­vide a thor­ough assess­ment of the sta­tis­ti­cal evidence on…