Publications & Testimony

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…

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…

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…

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…

According to a new study to be pub­lished in the Santa Clara Law Review, a defan­dant in California is more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death for killing a white per­son than for mur­der­ing a per­son of any oth­er race, despite there being more black and Hispanic mur­der vic­tims in the state. The research also shows that geog­ra­phy plays a key role in whether the death penal­ty will be sought in a par­tic­u­lar case. The study implies that the loss of white lives is considered more…

The lat­est edi­tion of the Consular Rights in America newslet­ter is now avail­able. The newslet­ter dis­cuss­es legal and polit­i­cal devel­op­ments con­cern­ing cit­i­zens of oth­er coun­tries who are in prison or on death row in the U.S. Issue 29 con­tains excerpts from the Texas Lawyer of recent argu­ments before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in the case of Jose Medellin, a Mexican cit­i­zen on death row in Texas. This case has already been the sub­ject of argu­ments before the…

Qin Yanhong was con­vict­ed of rape and mur­der in China in 1999. A pan­el of judges sen­tenced him to death. His con­vic­tion was the result of a con­fes­sion that fol­lowed days of tor­ture and inter­ror­ga­tion by police, despite the fact that such tac­tics are for­bid­den under Chinese law. The senior detec­tive on the case expressed absolute con­fi­dence in the con­vic­tion and even offered to accept the pun­ish­ment if it was proven wrong. In 2001, anoth­er man walked into a nearby…

As stu­dents return to the class­room this fall, the Death Penalty Information Center is offer­ing edu­ca­tors an updat­ed ver­sion of its award-win­n­ing Educational Curriculum on the Death Penalty to assist teach­ers who wish to include this top­ic in their class­rooms. DPIC’s bal­anced and dynam­ic online cur­ricu­lum was designed in con­junc­tion with the Michigan State Communications Technology Laboratory. This free class­room tool offers sep­a­rate teacher and stu­dent sites, flexible…

As stu­dents return to the class­room this month, the Death Penalty Information Center is offer­ing teach­ers an updat­ed ver­sion of its free online edu­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lum on the death penal­ty and oth­er resources to assist edu­ca­tors who wish to incor­po­rate this top­ic into their class­room les­son plans. DPIC’s award-win­n­ing online cur­ricu­lum was designed by the Michigan State Communications Technology Laboratory in con­junc­tion with the Death Penalty Information Center. It…

A fed­er­al judge in Boston pre­sid­ing over the death penal­ty case of two black defen­dants has ordered a change in the process of sum­mon­ing jurors in order to ensure a more diverse jury. U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner wrote a 95-page opin­ion and not­ed that it would be​“pro­found­ly trou­bling” if the defen­dants, Darryl Green and Branden Morris, were to face an all-white jury in a tri­al for their lives. Gertner cit­ed stud­ies that showed that wealth­i­er geo­graph­ic areas keep…