Publications & Testimony

The North Carolina State Bar has charged two for­mer Union County pros­e­cu­tors with lying, cheat­ing, and with­hold­ing evi­dence in a 1996 mur­der case that end­ed in a death sen­tence. The charges state that for­mer Union County District Attorney Kenneth Honeycutt and his assis­tant, Scott Brewer, each com­mit­ted 23 vio­la­tions of the rules that gov­ern lawyers dur­ing their 1996 pros­e­cu­tion of Jonathan Hoffman, who was sen­tenced to death for rob­bery and mur­der. The State Bar says that Honeycutt and…

John Spirko is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on September 20 in Ohio but the state’s Attorney General, Jim Petro, has rec­om­mend­ed fur­ther review of the case because his senior deputy mis­rep­re­sent­ed evi­dence to the Parole Board. The Board vot­ed 6 – 3 against lenien­cy for Spirko, who received a death sen­tence for a 1982 mur­der. Other nation­al lead­ers, such as for­mer FBI Director William S. Sessions, have also urged the state to inves­ti­gate the case more close­ly. In a let­ter to Ohio Governor Bob Taft,…

Edna Weaver, whose daugh­ter was mur­dered in New Jersey, expressed relief that the defen­dant was spared the death penal­ty. She said that she did not want William Severs Jr. exe­cut­ed for killing Tina Lambriola in 2002 because she want­ed to spare his moth­er the pain of los­ing a child. ​“I’m so thank­ful it came out the way it did.… I would­n’t want anoth­er moth­er to feel like I do — it’s a feel­ing I could nev­er put into words.… At least his moth­er will be able to write to him, she will…

As Iraq resumed car­ry­ing out the death penal­ty with the exe­cu­tion of three nation­als on September 1, the European Union (EU) expressed its hope that Iraq would aban­don cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In a state­ment released after the exe­cu­tions, the EU not­ed, ​“The EU is of the view that the death penal­ty does not serve as an effec­tive deter­rent and any mis­car­riage of jus­tice, which might arise in any legal sys­tem, would be irre­versible. The EU there­fore regrets that the gov­ern­ment of Iraq has elected to…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in The Washington Post praised Indiana Governor Mitchell Daniels for com­mut­ing the death sen­tence of Arthur Baird, who suf­fers from severe men­tal ill­ness. The editorial…

Benjamin Wittes, edi­to­r­i­al page writer for The Washington Post, dis­cuss­es the death penal­ty in light of recent U.S. Supreme Court deci­sions in the October 2005 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. He states that the Court has ​“shift­ed gears on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment” and pre­dicts that this trend will con­tin­ue through a series of deci­sions lim­it­ing the death penal­ty and address­ing sys­temic flaws that con­tin­ue to sur­face. Wittes writes: The Court has with­out ques­tion shift­ed gears on capital punishment.

Victims of Justice Revisited, a new book by Thomas Frisbie and Randy Garrett, details the inno­cence case of Rolando Cruz, an Illinois man who was wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sent to death row for the 1983 mur­der of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico. The book tells the sto­ry of Cruz and his two co-defen­dants, Alejandro Hernandez and Stephen Buckley, from the day of the crime to the ground­break­ing tri­al of sev­en law enforce­ment offi­cers accused of con­spir­ing to deny Cruz a fair tri­al. Cruz’s case…

Arthur Baird, who was to be exe­cut­ed on August 31 for mur­der­ing his par­ents in Indiana, received a com­mu­ta­tion to a life sen­tence from Governor Mitch Daniels. (WishTV​.com, Ch.8, Indianapolis, Aug. 29, 2005). Two mem­bers of the Indiana Supreme Court had writ­ten that Baird was ​“only mar­gin­al­ly in touch with real­i­ty,” in a deci­sion in which the major­i­ty had allowed the exe­cu­tion to go for­ward. A report to the court from Dr. Philip M. Coons, a pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of psy­chi­a­try at the…

Update: Frances Newton was exe­cut­ed in Texas on September 14, 2005. As Texas pre­pares to exe­cute Frances Newton on September 14, her attor­neys have raised ques­tions in a clemen­cy peti­tion about her guilt based on new evi­dence, includ­ing con­flict­ing accounts of whether inves­ti­ga­tors recov­ered a sec­ond gun at the crime scene. Newton, who would be the first black woman exe­cut­ed in the state since the Civil War, was sen­tenced to death for the 1987 killings of her hus­band and her two…

Bill Wiseman, the for­mer Oklahoma leg­is­la­tor who intro­duced lethal injec­tion as a method of exe­cu­tion in the U.S. in order to make death row inmates’ deaths more humane, now regrets hav­ing pushed the con­cept into law. He notes that he intro­duced the mea­sure in order to ease his shame for hav­ing vot­ed to restore the death penal­ty in Oklahoma, stat­ing, ​“I’m sor­ry for what I did. I hope some­day to off­set it by help­ing us real­ize that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is wrong and self-destruc­tive.” While…