Publications & Testimony

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,…

Even as the use of the death penal­ty con­tin­ued to decline in the United States, the num­ber of mur­ders and the nation­al mur­der rate dropped in 2004. According to the recent­ly released FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2004, the nation’s mur­der rate fell by 3.3%, declin­ing to 5.5 mur­ders per 100,000 peo­ple in 2004. By region, the Northeast, which accounts for less than 1% of all U.S. exe­cu­tions, con­tin­ued to have the nation’s low­est mur­der rate, 4.2. The Midwest had a mur­der rate of 4.7, and the…

Various courts issued rul­ings this week regard­ing issues impor­tant to capital punishment…

Clarence David Hill (pic­tured) has been freed after spend­ing near­ly 16 years on Arizona’s death row. Hill, who is ter­mi­nal­ly ill, recent­ly had his 1^st-degree mur­der con­vic­tion and death sen­tence over­turned. Though he main­tains his inno­cence in the 1989 mur­der of his land­lord, Hill chose to avoid the prospect of a new tri­al by accept­ing an agree­ment that allowed him to plead guilty to 2^nd-degree mur­der and be sen­tenced to time already served. Hill’s attor­ney not­ed that his client only took the…

A pros­e­cu­tor train­ing video­tape fea­tur­ing for­mer Philadelphia assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney Jack McMahon dis­cussing tech­niques to keep African Americans off of juries has result­ed in yet anoth­er mur­der con­vic­tion rever­sal. Noting that the tape is ​“com­pelling evi­dence” that McMahon ​“reg­u­lar­ly act­ed with dis­crim­i­na­to­ry ani­mus toward African-American jurors,” a prac­tice made uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1986 deci­sion in Batson v. Kentucky, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3^rd…