Publications & Testimony

A mil­i­tary jury unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed for a death sen­tence for U.S. Airman Andrew Witt in Georgia on October 13, 2005 fol­low­ing his con­vic­tion in the mur­ders of anoth­er mil­i­tary offi­cer and his spouse. The mur­ders took place at Robins Air Force Base and stemmed from an inter­per­son­al dis­pute. The ver­dict and sen­tence now go before Maj. Gen. Michael Collings, com­man­der of the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center at Robins. Collings has the author­i­ty to uphold or modify…

In a recent opin­ion address­ing sev­er­al pro­ce­dur­al issues regard­ing the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment law, the Florida Supreme Court urged state leg­is­la­tors to require cap­i­tal jurors to be unan­i­mous in rec­om­mend­ing death sen­tences or at least in decid­ing what aggra­vat­ing fac­tors sup­port a death sen­tence.​“The bot­tom line is that Florida is now the only state in the coun­try that allows the death penal­ty to be imposed even though the penal­­ty-phase jury may…

The lat­est edi­tion of Christian Networks Journal fea­tures a series of arti­cles under the theme ​“Shalt Thou Kill?: An In-Depth Look at Capital Punishment.” In addi­tion to com­men­tary from two for­mer gov­er­nors and arti­cles by death penal­ty experts Franklin Zimring, Rob Warden, David Dow, and DPIC Executive Director Richard Dieter (on Costs), the mag­a­zine also con­tains inter­views and death row sto­ries. The mag­a­zine states that its pur­pose is​“to provide…

In its first death penal­ty case this term, the U.S. Supreme Court heard argu­ments in Brown v. Sanders, a California case in which the Justices con­sid­ered whether Ronald Sanders was wrong­ly sen­tenced to die by jurors who relied on invalid aggra­vat­ing fac­tors. Sanders was sen­tenced to death in 1982. The jury found four of the​“spe­cial cir­cum­stances” required in California and some oth­er states for a defen­dant to be eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. Two of those…

October 10^th was World Day Against the Death Penalty, an occas­sion that Amnesty International used to urge abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in all African states. Amnesty offi­cials not­ed that recent devel­op­ments show a trend toward death penal­ty abo­li­tion among African coun­tries, and they stat­ed that the major­i­ty of the con­ti­nen­t’s nations have aban­doned using cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Senegal abol­ished the death penal­ty for all crimes in December 2004 and Liberia in…

A jury in Arizona acquit­ted Christopher Huerstel of first-degree mur­der and of attempt­ed armed rob­bery of a Tucson pizze­ria in which 3 peo­ple were killed. Huerstel, who was 17-years-old at the time the crime was com­mit­ted, was orig­nal­ly con­vict­ed along with a co-defen­­dant and both were sen­tenced to death in 2001. His con­vic­tion was over­turned by the Arizona Supreme Court because of errors by the tri­al judge. The jury at the re-tri­al was unable to reach a verdict on…

Ruling that jurors in the most recent retri­al of Johnny Paul Penry may not have prop­er­ly con­sid­ered his claims of men­tal impair­ment, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals sent Penry’s case back for re-sen­­tenc­ing. The Texas court’s deci­sion marks the third time that Penry’s death sen­tence has been over­turned dur­ing the past 16 years. The U.S. Supreme Court over­turned his cap­i­tal con­vic­tion in 1989 in Penry v. Lynaugh, a deci­sion uphold­ing the exe­cu­tion of defendants…

In a dis­sent­ing opin­ion filed in the cap­i­tal case of Moore v. Parker, Judge Boyce Martin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit wrote that ​“the death penal­ty in this coun­try is arbi­trary, biased, and so fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed at its very core that it is beyond repair.” Among his many crit­i­cisms of the way cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is applied in the U.S., Martin specif­i­cal­ly not­ed his con­cerns about the issues of inno­cence, inad­e­quate defense coun­sel, and…

A new study by a team of researchers at the New York Times looks at the expand­ing use of life sen­tences in the American crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The study, head­ed by Times reporter Adam Liptak, found that about 132,000 of the nation’s pris­on­ers, or almost 10%, are serv­ing life sen­tences. Of those, 28% have life sen­tences with no chance of parole. This is a marked increase from a 1993 Times study that found 20% of all lif­ers had no chance of parole. Liptak also reported that…

(Pursuant to the Supreme Court’s 2005 rul­ing in Roper v. Simmons, the death penal­ty is pro­hib­it­ed in all states for those under the age of 18 when the offense for which they were charged…