Publications & Testimony

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…

The Cultural Lives of Capital Punishment, a new book edit­ed by pro­fes­sor Austin Sarat of Amherst College and lec­tur­er Christian Boulanger of the Free University in Berlin, exam­ines the com­pli­cat­ed dynam­ics of the death penal­ty in eleven nations to deter­mine what role cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment plays in defin­ing a coun­try’s polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty. The edi­tors note that a nation’s val­ues and cul­tur­al his­to­ry influ­ence its rela­tion­ship with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The book includes…

A two-year Dallas Morning News inves­ti­ga­tion of jury selec­tion in Dallas County has revealed that pros­e­cu­tors exclude blacks from juries at more than twice the rate they reject whites, and that race is the most impor­tant per­son­al trait affect­ing which jurors pros­e­cu­tors reject. The paper’s review also found that when poten­tial black and white jurors answered key ques­tions about crim­i­nal jus­tice issues the same way, blacks were reject­ed at a high­er rate. The study exam­ined 108 (non-death…

John P. Flannery, a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor and spe­cial coun­sel to the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees, recent­ly not­ed the broad prob­lems in Virginia’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem that could lead to con­vict­ing the innocent:We are con­vict­ing inno­cent peo­ple in Virginia because of false eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, false con­fes­sions, over-eager snitch­es, faulty foren­sics, bad defense lawyers but also, and this is the worst of all, because of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and police mis­con­duct. In…

The Appellate Division of New Jersey​’s Superior Court in State v. Jimenez announced new pro­ce­dures on August 17, 2005 for decid­ing claims of men­tal retar­da­tion by a defen­dant fac­ing the death penal­ty: (a) the State must be put to the bur­den of prov­ing the absence of men­tal retar­da­tion when a col­orable issue is pre­sent­ed; (b) the State’s bur­den is to prove the absence of men­tal retar­da­tion beyond a rea­son­able doubt; (c) the jury must be the factfind­er; and (d) a defendant may…

The Birmingham News sharply crit­i­cized Alabama’s sys­tem of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in death penal­ty cas­es, say­ing that the pub­lic should be out­raged. A lack of even min­i­mal resources and pay has caused attor­neys to with­draw from cas­es and to decline rep­re­sen­ta­tion to indi­gent defen­dants. The paper wrote that this short­age of attor­neys could result in more tri­al errors and longer appeals, putting an undue strain on vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and the entire sys­tem of jus­tice. The edi­to­r­i­al stated:What would it…

A new Michigan Law Review arti­cle by Professor John Blume of Cornell Law School exam­ines the rela­tion­ship between ​“vol­un­teer­ing” for exe­cu­tion and sui­cide. Blume found that near­ly 88% of all death row inmates who have ​“vol­un­teered” for exe­cu­tion have strug­gled with men­tal ill­ness and/​or sub­stance abuse. He writes that there is an espe­cial­ly strong link between ​“vol­un­teerism” and men­tal ill­ness. Of the ​“vol­un­teer” exe­cu­tions he reviewed, 14 involved schiz­o­phre­nia and several more…

The Death Penalty Information Center recent­ly became aware of two old­er cap­i­tal cas­es in which the defen­dants had been sen­tenced to death but were lat­er acquit­ted at re-tri­al. We have added Christopher McCrimmon of Arizona and Larry Fisher of Mississippi to our inno­cence list, bring­ing the total num­ber of peo­ple released from death row on the basis of inno­cence to 121 since 1973. McCrimmon is the eighth per­son to be exon­er­at­ed from Arizona’s death row, and Fisher is the second…