Publications & Testimony

South Korea’s Ministry of Justice has announced that it is con­sid­er­ing replac­ing the death penal­ty with life with­out parole, a move that the min­istry says stems from con­cerns about human rights.​“We will thor­ough­ly exam­ine the pos­si­bil­i­ty of abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty as part of efforts to set up a human rights-ori­en­t­ed penal sys­tem.… We will review the ade­qua­cy of intro­duc­ing per­ma­nent life impris­on­ment which can­not be remit­ted by parole, as well as…

The num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death each year in California has declined by near­ly 40% since the 1990s. According to the California Department of Corrections, on aver­age, the state sent 35 peo­ple to death row each year dur­ing the 1990s. Since 2000, that num­ber has declined to an aver­age of 21 annu­al­ly. California has the largest death row in the coun­try. California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald M. George attrib­uted some of the decline to more selec­tive charging by…

An exam­i­na­tion of recent Gallup sur­veys in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada found that Americans are more sup­port­ive of the death penal­ty than are either Britons or Canadians. An October 2005 poll of Americans mea­sured sup­port for the death penal­ty at 64%, a fig­ure that was sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than the 44% sup­port mea­sured in Canada and the 49% sup­port found in Great Britain dur­ing December 2005 polls. Support for the death penal­ty recent­ly declined in both…

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…