Publications & Testimony

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 about 9,700 people…

(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 was…

Karla, a new play by singer and song­writer Steve Earle will open at the 45 Bleecker St. Theatre on October 20 in New York City. The play tells the life sto­ry of Karla Faye Tucker, the first woman exe­cut­ed in Texas since the Civil War. She was exe­cut­ed by lethal injec­tion in 1998 while George W. Bush was gov­er­nor, despite her obvi­ous reha­bil­i­ta­tion and oppo­si­tion from a broad spec­trum of nation­al and inter­na­tion­al lead­ers. The play is being pre­sent­ed by The Culture Project, which…

The entire cur­rent edi­tion of Congressional Quarterly’s CQ Researcher is devot­ed to a com­pre­hen­sive look at the death penal­ty in the U.S. This spe­cial CQ report, authored by Kenneth Jost and enti­tled ​“Death Penalty Controversies,” explores the his­to­ry of the U.S. death penal­ty and chang­ing pub­lic opin­ion about its use. It also looks at the cur­rent sta­tus of state mora­to­ri­um devel­op­ments, the con­tin­u­ing decline in U.S. exe­cu­tions, state respons­es to the Supreme Court’s ban on…

RACE AND THE DEATH PENALTY IN CALIFORNIA A recent study to be pub­lished in the Santa Clara Law Review found that the race of the vic­tim in the under­ly­ing mur­der great­ly affect­ed whether a defen­dant would be sen­tenced to death.Generally, there are more Hispanic and African American vic­tims of mur­der in California: –California Murder Victims 1990 – 1999 — Office of Vital Statistics; based on mur­ders where race of vic­tim was known; Whites, African American, and Other are…

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed yes­ter­day to review the case of a death row inmate from South Carolina who was denied the oppor­tu­ni­ty at tri­al to present evi­dence of the pos­si­ble guilt of anoth­er per­son. In Holmes v. South Carolina, No. 04 – 1327, the Court will con­sid­er whether the state’s rules regard­ing such evi­dence deprived Holmes of his due process rights to present a com­plete defense. In 2004, the South Carolina Supreme Court had ruled that the state’s evi­dence against Holmes…

The Judicial Conference of the United States, the pol­i­cy mak­ing body of the nation’s fed­er­al judges, wrote a strong let­ter to mem­bers of the Senate Judiciary Committee oppos­ing parts of the Streamlined Procedures Act (S.1088) that would cur­tail death penal­ty appeals. The bill is sched­uled to be marked up by the Committee on Thursday, September 29. The judges said the bill could ​“cre­ate unrea­son­able obsta­cles to res­o­lu­tion” of death penal­ty cas­es, and that it could ​“under­mine the…

Craig Haney, pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has just pub­lished a new book, Death By Design: Capital Punishment as a Social Psychological System (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2005). Haney explores a num­ber of areas that skew death penal­ty sentencing in…

Recent research has revealed a close cor­re­la­tion between the U.S. states that his­tor­i­cal­ly car­ried out the most lynch­ings and the states that today have the high­est homi­cide rates and most death…

The Amicus Journal dis­cuss­es death penal­ty issues from around the world. The lat­est edi­tion con­tains arti­cles on the ​“team­work” approach used by cap­i­tal defense attor­neys in Virginia, Africa’s progress in aban­don­ing the death penal­ty, and a fea­ture on the expe­ri­ence of being a lawyer on the front lines of cap­i­tal lit­i­ga­tion in the U.S. The pub­li­ca­tion also exam­ines the recent U.S. Supreme Court cas­es of Medellin v. Dretke and Miller-El v. Dretke. (13 Amicus Journal (2005), pub­lished in London…