Publications & Testimony

According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s quar­ter­ly report, Death Row U.S.A., the num­ber of peo­ple on death rows around the coun­try declined again as of July 1, 2005. The lat­est count of inmates is 3,415, down from 3,452 as of April 1 and down con­sid­er­ably from the 3,692 inmates record­ed on October 1, 2002. About 54.5% of those on death row are mem­bers of racial minori­ties. Pennsylvania (70%) and Texas (69%) had the largest per­cent­age of minor­i­ty defen­dants on death…

Newly pub­lished research exam­in­ing 340 exon­er­a­tions in the United States between 1989 and 2003 found that a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of those who were wrong­ly con­vict­ed had been sen­tenced to death. Researchers note that this find­ing appears to reflect two pat­terns: cap­i­tal defen­dants are more like­ly to be con­vict­ed in error, and false con­vic­tions are more like­ly to be detect­ed when defen­dants are on death row. The paper, authored by Professor Samuel Gross of the…

The Conference of Chief Justices over­whelm­ing­ly passed a res­o­lu­tion urg­ing Congress to not pass the pro­posed Streamlined Procedures Act, which is aimed at cur­tail­ing death penal­ty appeals. The res­o­lu­tion was passed by the Chief Justices from state courts around the coun­try at their annu­al meet­ing in Charlestown, South Carolina. Only the chief jus­tice of Texas’ Supreme Court vot­ed against the res­o­lu­tion, stat­ing that he did not have enough time to review the…

Homicide fig­ures for New York City show that the num­ber of mur­ders in 2005 may fall below 500, a fig­ure that would be the fewest since 1961 and would bring the city’s mur­der rate below the rate for the nation as a whole. So far this year, ran­dom mur­ders and mur­ders com­mit­ted dur­ing rob­beries and bur­glar­ies have also declined. Experts note that both declines appear to be large­ly attrib­ut­able to a greater police pres­ence, few­er guns, and the decrease in ran­dom violence in…

Speaking at the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Awards Dinner in Illinois, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said that the death penal­ty has​“seri­ous flaws.” He recalled the late Justice Marshall in remark­ing how much the coun­try has learned about the risks in death cas­es:​“Since his retire­ment, with the ben­e­fit of DNA evi­dence, we have learned that a sub­stan­tial num­ber of death sen­tences have been imposed erro­neous­ly,” Stevens said dur­ing the ceremony.

In a case that sharply illus­trates the fal­li­bil­i­ty of eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, Miami-Dade pros­e­cu­tors plan to ask a state judge to vacate the con­vic­tions of Luis Diaz based on DNA evi­dence that was not avail­able dur­ing his 1980 tri­al. Though he was short­er and lighter than the man that most wit­ness­es described to police, Diaz was charged with rape 25 years ago after eight women iden­ti­fied him as their attack­er. Following his tri­al, the judge said,​“I’ve never seen…

In tes­ti­mo­ny before the Massachusetts Joint Committee on the Judiciary regard­ing pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to ini­ti­ate a​“fool­proof” death penal­ty, Columbia Law School Professor Jeffrey Fagan (pic­tured) ana­lyzed recent stud­ies that claimed that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment deters mur­ders. He stat­ed that the studies ​“fall apart under close scruti­ny.” Fagan not­ed that the stud­ies are fraught with tech­ni­cal and con­cep­tu­al errors, including inappropriate…

Thomas Doswell of Pennsylvania and Larry Peterson of New Jersey recent­ly had their con­vic­tions over­turned as a direct result of DNA test­ing. Each defen­dant had serverd 18 years in prison. In Peterson’s case, the pros­e­cu­tion had sought the death penal­ty but the jury could not agree and he was sen­tenced to life. His case marked the first time a New Jersey court has over­turned a con­vic­tion because of DNA evi­dence. Both rever­sals stemmed from the work of attorneys…

A recent Alabama opin­ion poll found that less than half of those sur­veyed believe Alabama’s death penal­ty is applied fair­ly and 57% of respon­dents sup­port a tem­po­rary halt to exe­cu­tions in the state until ques­tions about fair­ness and reli­a­bil­i­ty are stud­ied. In oth­er find­ings, 96% of those sur­veyed sup­port the use of DNA in cas­es where it might prove guilt or inno­cence and 62% said they would be more like­ly to vote for a can­di­date who sup­port­ed sus­pen­sion of the…

Decided: June…