Publications & Testimony

The Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project report­ed that only 5 of the 22 juries that heard fed­er­al cap­i­tal cas­es imposed death sen­tences in the past year. During John Ashcroft’s term as Attorney General from 2001 to 2005, 18 of the 63 juries in cap­i­tal cas­es returned death sen­tences. Some mem­bers of Congress have pro­posed eas­ing the rules for obtain­ing death sen­tences in fed­er­al cas­es, allow­ing the gov­ern­ment to seek the death penal­ty repeat­ed­ly if the jury is not unanimous for…

An Appeal Court of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico recent­ly held that it would be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al to extra­dite Juan Melendez Cruz to Pennsylvania if he faces a pos­si­ble death sen­tence. The court referred to the issue as one involv­ing the fun­da­men­tal right to life. In July 2003, Philadelphia District Attorney spokes­woman Cathie Abookire con­firmed that Melendez Cruz, a Puerto Rican native, could face the death penal­ty in Pennsylvania. Melendez Cruz’s attor­ney, Eileen Diaz, argued that…

An October 2005 Gallup Poll found that only 64% of Americans favored the death penal­ty for those con­vict­ed of mur­der. The last time the poll found a low­er sup­port was in 1978 when 62% favored the death penal­ty. The high point for pub­lic endorse­ment of the death penal­ty came in 1994 when 80% sup­port­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. This most recent poll result is con­sis­tent with Gallup Polls tak­en in October 2004 and 2003, both reg­is­ter­ing a 64% sup­port of the death penal­ty. (See Gallup Poll…

North Carolina House Speaker Jim Black has appoint­ed 20 House mem­bers to a study com­mis­sion that will exam­ine how the death penal­ty is car­ried out in the state. The com­mis­sion will also rec­om­mend pos­si­ble cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment-relat­ed pol­i­cy reforms for their col­leagues to con­sid­er dur­ing their ses­sion next spring. The com­mis­sion will be chaired by Representatives Joe Hackney of Chapel Hill and Beverly Earle of Charlotte. Members of the com­mis­sion will con­sult with vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers, law…

A new doc­u­men­tary, ​“After Innocence,” by Jessica Sanders and Marc Simon, is open­ing in cities around the coun­try. This award-win­ning film (Sundance and oth­er film fes­ti­vals) tells the sto­ries of wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed defen­dants who were exon­er­at­ed through DNA evi­dence, and about what hap­pens to them after their release as they attempt to rebuild their lives. The film opens in Washington, D.C. at the Landmark’s E St. Cinema, 555 11^th St. NW, on Friday, Nov. 4. A dis­cus­sion will follow…

In an edi­to­r­i­al on October 27, the Los Angeles Times called for an end to the death penal­ty in California. The Times stat­ed that the pun­ish­ment should end not because of the mer­its of indi­vid­ual death row inmates, such as Stanley Williams, sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on December 13, but because of ​“who we are” as a civ­i­lized society:EDITORIAL Shut down death rowOctober 27, 2005STANLEY ​“TOOKIE” WILLIAMS is a charis­mat­ic sym­bol of what’s wrong with the death penal­ty — and of what’s wrong with the…

Several pro­vi­sions con­tained with­in the U.S. House of Representatives ver­sion of leg­is­la­tion to reau­tho­rize the USA Patriot Act anti-ter­ror­ism law aim to dra­mat­i­cal­ly trans­form the fed­er­al death penal­ty sys­tem by allow­ing small­er juries to decide on exe­cu­tions and giv­ing pros­e­cu­tors the abil­i­ty to try again if the jury dead­locks on sen­tenc­ing. The leg­isla­tive changes, spon­sored by Texas Congressman John Carter, would also triple the num­ber of ter­ror­ism-relat­ed crimes eli­gi­ble for the death…

The Death Penalty: Constitutional Issues, Commentaries and Case Briefs is a new text­book that brings togeth­er many of the legal issues of the death penal­ty and presents them in an easy-to-digest form. The book pro­vides a brief ret­ro­spec­tive analy­sis of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment over the past two cen­turies, and then details the cur­rent sta­tus of the U.S. death penal­ty. With a chap­ter that focus­es on the U.S. Supreme Court cas­es Furman v. Georgia and Gregg v. Georgia, as well as chap­ters on race, the…

According to a new report released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), struc­tur­al and pro­ce­dur­al flaws in Alabama’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem stack the deck against fair tri­als and appro­pri­ate sen­tenc­ing for those fac­ing the death penal­ty. The report, Broken Justice: The Death Penalty in Alabama, details unfair and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices in the state’s admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty. It con­cen­trates on six major areas of con­cern: inad­e­quate defense, prosecutorial misconduct,…