Publications & Testimony

After more than two decades of work­ing to spare the life of Florida death row inmate James Floyd, the fam­i­ly of the woman he mur­dered has suc­ceed­ed in get­ting pros­e­cu­tors to reduce Floyd’s sen­tence to life in prison for the mur­der of Annie Bar Anderson.​“I did not want him to die, and I did­n’t want his fam­i­ly to suf­fer the mur­der of their father or their broth­er or their son. What good is anger and hatred,” said Elizabeth Blair, who took up the fam­i­ly’s effort to spare…

Truth Be Told: Life Lessons From Death Row fea­tures cor­re­spon­dence between Agnes Vadas and Richard Nields, who is on death row in Ohio. The book con­tains let­ters exchanged between the two over six years. They dis­cuss a wide range of top­ics, includ­ing life on death row, how they have coped with chal­lenges in life, and the lessons they have learned from hard­ship. Agnes Vadas is a musi­cian and human rights activist from Washington. (AuthorHouse, 2005). See…

Philip Yam is the News Editor of Scientific American Magazine. He recent­ly post­ed an item on the mag­a­zine’s Web site about the death penal­ty. Some excerpts from the post­ing, enti­tled​“Science ver­sus the Death Penalty,”…

The San Antonio Express-News, which sup­ports the death penal­ty, recent­ly called for a halt to exe­cu­tions in Texas because of con­cerns about the ongo­ing prob­lems at the Houston Crime Lab. The Express-News stat­ed:This month, New Jersey law­mak­ers vot­ed to halt exe­cu­tions while a task force reviews the fair­ness and costs of impos­ing the death penal­ty.Texas should con­sid­er doing the same but for slight­ly dif­fer­ent rea­sons.The dis­turb­ing facts com­ing out of an…

The January 2006 edi­tion of the National Geographic fea­tures the town of Monroeville, Alabama, home of freed death row inmate Walter McMillian (pic­tured) and Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird. In the arti­cle, which high­lights the town’s annu­al the­atri­cal trib­ute to Lee’s book, McMillian’s case is not­ed as​“an eerie echo” of the book’s sto­ry­line. In a resem­blance to Lee’s black fic­tion­al char­ac­ter Tom Robinson, McMillian was con­vict­ed in 1987 of murdering…

The Georgia Public Defender Standards Council has pub­lished an analy­sis of death penal­ty cas­es in the state dur­ing the past 30 years. The report was writ­ten by Michael Mears, Director of the Council. The review exam­ines the mod­ern his­to­ry of Georgia’s death penal­ty, and pro­vides data sort­ed in a num­ber of ways, includ­ing by coun­ty, cir­cuit, and defen­dant. It also pro­vides the fol­low­ing sum­ma­ry of the dis­po­si­tions of Georgia’s death penal­ty cas­es: DISPOSITION OF…

Two Virginia law­mak­ers who have had a fam­i­ly mem­ber mur­dered recent­ly spoke in oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty. During a sen­ate com­mit­tee hear­ing on a bill to impose a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, Senators Henry L. Marsh III and Janet D. Howell not­ed that their oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty was based in their expe­ri­ence of los­ing a loved one to mur­der. Howell’s father-in-law was mur­dered in his home eight years ago. She noted, ​“Up until then, I was in…

In a recent inter­view with The Washington Post, NAACP pres­i­dent Bruce C. Gordon (pic­tured) spoke about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and called for a halt to exe­cu­tions in every state until ques­tions of accu­ra­cy and fair­ness can be addressed. Gordon, who chal­lenged California Governor Arnold Schwarzennegger for refus­ing to com­mute the death sen­tence of Stanley Tookie Williams, not­ed that the death penal­ty will be a key issue for the NAACP: African Americans rep­re­sent 10 percent of…

Governor Mark Warner of Virginia announced that DNA tests on evi­dence from the case of Roger Keith Coleman, who was exe­cut­ed in 1992, revealed that he was almost cer­tain­ly the source of genet­ic mate­r­i­al found in the body of the vic­tim, Wanda McCoy. The Governor said that this test​“re-affirms the ver­dict and sanc­tion” in this case. Peter Neufeld, co-direc­­tor of the Innocence Project, praised the gov­er­nor’s deci­sion to allow the test­ing and not­ed that,​“The real issue is…

A group of 40 law enforce­ment offi­cers, cur­rent and for­mer pros­e­cu­tors, and judges at the state and fed­er­al lev­el have urged California law­mak­ers to enact a tem­po­rary halt to exe­cu­tions in the state while a com­mis­sion exam­ines the accu­ra­cy and fair­ness of the death penal­ty. In a let­ter to mem­bers of the California Assembly, the bi-par­ti­san group of death penal­ty sup­port­ers and oppo­nents wrote, “[G]iven that DNA test­ing and oth­er new evi­dence has proven that…