Publications & Testimony

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…

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…

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…

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…