Publications & Testimony

A new study on the use of the death penalty in Trinidad and Tobago has been published by Roger Hood and Florence Seemungal. The authors closely examine prosecutions under the country’s mandatory death penalty statute, which requires imposition of a death sentence whenever a defendant is found guilty of murder. The study found that, despite a high number of killings, relatively few people were convicted of murder, and not necessarily those who committed the most heinous crimes. The authors note…

Justin Fuller was executed in Texas on August 24. He was the 19^th person executed this year, equaling the total number of people executed last year in the state. The San Antonio Express-News reported that Fuller had been represented by an attorney who “filed an appeal with incoherent repetitions, rambling arguments and language clearly lifted from one of his previous cases, so that at one point it described the wrong crime.” The appeal filed for Fuller copied wording that the attorney had…

A sophisticated statistical study of homicide cases in South Carolina by Professor Isaac Unah of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and attorney Michael Songer found that prosecutors were more likely to seek the death penalty when the victim in the underlying murder was white, if the victim was female, and when the crime occurred in a rural area of the state. The authors first examined the raw data of homicide cases in South Carolina over a 5‑year period and noted: During the 1993…

As students return for the start of the school year, DPIC’s award-winning Educational Curriculum on the Death Penalty is available for teacher and student use. This free curriculum was designed by the Michigan State Communications Technology Laboratory in conjunction with the Death Penalty Information Center. There are separate teacher and student sites, flexible lesson plans, teacher overviews, dynamic maps, and educational objectives meeting national standards. The curriculum’s Web site…

The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America is a new book by Marie Gottschalk of the University of Pennsylvania analyzing the reasons behind the tremendous growth in the prison population in the United States. The book examines issues of race, the intersection of prisons with women’s issues, and the consequences of widespread incarceration on society and the economy. The author delves into the recent history of the death penalty and relates it to the larger debates…

Ray Krone (pictured, center) was convicted and sentenced to death in 1992 for the murder Kim Ancona in Arizona. Krone’s conviction was eventually overturned. He was re-tried and again convicted in 1996. Finally, in 2002, DNA testing excluded Krone from the crime and he was freed. Now another man has pleaded guilty to the offense. Kenneth Phillips, Jr. was sentenced to a term of 53 years to life in prison for the murder and sexual assault on August 18, 2006. DNA evidence linked Phillips to the…

A federal judge presiding over the Aryan Brotherhood murder trial in Santa Ana, California, has ruled that the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which requires that defendants be given the opportunity to confront and cross examine witnesses testifying against them at trial, applies to at least part of the federal death penalty sentencing procedure as well. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2004 in Crawford v. Washington that testimonial evidence from a person against a defendant cannot…

The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty was created in Rome on May 12, 2002, and consists of 52 organizations throughout the world: NGOs, attorneys’ associations, trade unions, local communities, and other organizations (including many that are active in the U.S.) challenging capital punishment. The Coalition has chosen October 10, 2006 as the day to put particular focus on problems with the death penalty around the world. For more information, see their Web site: www.worldcoalition.org.

The British Government plans to seek Parliamentary approval of a pardon for more than 300 soldiers executed for military offenses during World War I. The announcement came just after a pardon was revealed for Private Harry Farr, who was executed at age 25 for refusing to fight. Defense Secretary Des Browne said: “I believe a group pardon, approved by Parliament, is the best way to deal with this. After 90 years, the evidence just doesn’t exist to assess all the cases individually. “I do not…

South Dakota has scheduled the execution of Elijah Page for August 28. If this execution goes forward, it will mark the fifth inmate in the past six weeks who waived his appeals and was then executed. This will also be the first execution in South Dakota in 59 years. About 12% of those who have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 have voluntarily waived appeals that would likely have delayed their execution. Such executions raise questions about the stated purposes of…