Publications & Testimony

A new book by Professor Austin Sarat (pic­tured) focus­es on clemen­cy’s role in the U.S. crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem:​“Mercy on Trial: What It Means to Stop an Execution.” According to U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy,​“This thought­ful book should be read by every cit­i­zen who cares about the issue, and by every gov­er­nor and pres­i­dent entrust­ed with the pow­er to pun­ish or par­don.” In​“Mercy on Trial,” Sarat reviews the com­plex­i­ties of clemen­cy and exam­ines issues such as…

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is expand­ing its Capital Punishment Project to include lit­i­ga­tion in addi­tion to its already estab­lished pub­lic edu­ca­tion efforts. The expand­ed pro­gram will be led by John Holdridge, who has been named the Capital Punishment Project’s new direc­tor.​“John Holdridge is one of the nation’s pre­mier death penal­ty lit­i­ga­tors. He has fought the death penal­ty in court­rooms around the coun­try for more than a decade and now brings…

Though the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit assumes that Texas death row inmate Marvin Lee Wilson is men­tal­ly retard­ed, it ruled that he can­not raise the issue in fed­er­al court because his defense attor­ney missed a fil­ing dead­line. The U.S. Supreme Court has banned the exe­cu­tion of those with men­tal retar­da­tion, but the Fifth Circuit stat­ed that​“how­ev­er harsh the result may be” their hands are tied by dead­lines estab­lished in the 1996 Antiterrorism and…

In a recent op-ed, for­mer Maryland Governor Parris Glendening crit­i­cized the​“trou­bling” racial and geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties that plague the state’s death penal­ty. Glendening, who served as Governor from 1995 to 2003, com­mis­sioned a study of Maryland’s death penal­ty dur­ing his time in office and imple­ment­ed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions dur­ing his sec­ond term to allow time for action to be tak­en to pre­vent these on-going…

Members of the New Jersey Senate have over­whelm­ing­ly passed a bill that would sus­pend exe­cu­tions in the state and cre­ate a new death penal­ty study com­mis­sion to exam­ine New Jersey’s death penal­ty. The bill, S‑709, passed by a vote of 30 – 6 and now moves to the New Jersey Assembly for con­sid­er­a­tion in January. Should the bill become law, New Jersey would become the first state in the coun­try to leg­isla­tive­ly impose a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty. The bill would…

The lat­est edi­tion of Death Row USA from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund is now avail­able. The report reveals that the num­ber of peo­ple on death rows across the coun­try dropped by almost 90 inmates from one year ago. There were 3,471 inmates on death row as of October 1, 2004. In 2005, the death row pop­u­la­tion had shrunk to 3,383. California’s death row remains the largest in the coun­try with 648 peo­ple, fol­lowed by Texas (414), Florida (388), and Pennsylvania…

The release of two Virginia men who were exon­er­at­ed after the state con­duct­ed new DNA test­ing on evi­dence from 31 cas­es has prompt­ed Governor Mark Warner (pic­tured) to call for a more sweep­ing review of the state’s stored bio­log­i­cal evi­dence. Warner has ordered 660 box­es con­tain­ing thou­sands of files from 1973 through 1988 to be exam­ined for cas­es that can be retest­ed using the lat­est DNA tech­nol­o­gy.​“I believe a look back at these retained case files is the only…

A recent Newsweek arti­cle notes that a grow­ing num­ber of jurors in cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es are voic­ing their con­cerns about the accu­ra­cy and fair­ness of the jus­tice sys­tem. Some of these jurors have peti­tioned the legal author­i­ties to cor­rect injus­tices regard­ing pos­si­bly inno­cent or incor­rect­ly sen­tenced inmates.​“I felt like I was pushed into mak­ing the deci­sion of the 10 oth­er jurors. I did­n’t feel com­fort­able with it, but I did­n’t know my rights as…

During a recent meet­ing of the European Union’s full assem­bly, European Parliament pres­i­dent Josep Borrell called on the 76 coun­tries around the world that con­tin­ue to retain the death penal­ty to dis­con­tin­ue use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. He not­ed that the United States is the only demo­c­ra­t­ic state that makes​“wide­spread use” of the death penal­ty and that the European Union has a duty to con­vince Americans to end the prac­tice.​“Most unfor­tu­nate­ly, in the U.S. the…

Former San Antonio District Attorney Sam Millsap, who once pro­claimed him­self a​“life­long sup­port­er of the death penal­ty,” now oppos­es cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Millsap says his deci­sion to oppose the death penal­ty was recent­ly affirmed as evi­dence sur­faced that Texas may have killed an inno­cent man when it exe­cut­ed Ruben Cantu, a San Antonio man who was sen­tenced to die while Millsap was DA.​“It is trou­bling to me per­son­al­ly. No deci­sion is more frightening than…