Publications & Testimony

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…

In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, Felix G. Rohatyn (pic­tured), the U.S. Ambassador to France from 1997 to 2001, not­ed that dur­ing his tenure ​“no sin­gle issue was viewed with as much hos­til­i­ty as our sup­port for the death penal­ty.” Rohatyn urged the U.S. to con­sid­er the impact of main­tain­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment on our rela­tions with our allies, and he stat­ed that con­sid­er­a­tion of inter­na­tion­al trends is appro­pri­ate when cas­es are reviewed by the Supreme Court. Rohatyn…

The U.S. Supreme Court grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion to Clarence Hill in Florida just min­utes before his exe­cu­tion was to take place on January 24. The next day, the Court made the stay per­ma­nent until they could hear Hill’s chal­lenge to the lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures in Florida. Hill raised a civ­il rights claim (sec­tion 1983) stat­ing that the chem­i­cals used in lethal injec­tion could inflict severe and unnec­es­sary pain. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit reject­ed his use of…

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 Floyd’s life after…

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,” are…

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 inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into cases…

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 a white woman in Monroeville…