Publications & Testimony

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…

A symposium entitled “The Next Generation of Death Penalty Research: Priorities, Strategies, and an Agenda” will be sponsored by the Capital Punishment Research Initiative of the State University of New York in Albany on October 6 & 7, 2006. Speakers will explore contemporary death penalty laws and practices, and the role of empirical research in changing capital punishment policies. Included in an extensive list of impressive speakers are: David Baldus of the University of Iowa Law School…

The August 2006 edition of the National Geographic Magazine contains a chart illustrating the probabilities of dying from particular causes. For example, the chances of dying from heart disease are 1 in 5. The chances of dying in a motor vehicle accident during one’s lifetime are 1 in 84. Far down in the list is the chance of dying by legal execution: 1 in 62,468. The very next item in the list is dying by a stroke of lightning: 1 in 79,746. In 1972, in his concurring opinion in Furman v.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, together with the Federalist Society and the Constitution Project, recently sponsored a panel in Washington, D.C., examining the application, morality and constitutionality of the death penalty in the United States. The panel was moderated by Virginia Sloan of the Constitution Project and featured Samuel Millsap, Jr., former Texas District Attorney, William Otis, Counselor to the Head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Kenneth Starr (pictured)…

The American Bar Association passed a resolution on August 8 at its annual conference recommending that jurisdictions refrain from sentencing to death or executing individuals with severe mental disorders. Using language adopted earlier by the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association, the resolution asserted that defendants should not be executed or sentenced to death if, at the time of the offense, they had “significant limitations in both their intellectual…

Samuel Flippen is scheduled to be executed on August 18 in North Carolina for the 1994 death of his two-year-old step-daughter, Britnie Hutton. On the day of Britnie’s death, Flippen made emergency 911 calls seeking medical attention for her. There had been no history of him previously injuring Britnie. Defense attorneys claim that Flippen’s actions preceding Britnie’s death are strong evidence that he had no intention of harming his step-daughter. The attorneys are seeking clemency from the…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned the death sentence of an Ohio man convicted in a 1995 contract killing, stating that the death sentence was arbitrary because other equally culpable defendants received lesser sentences. While three other defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment, only nineteen-year-old Jason Getsy was sentenced to death. Prosecutors said John Santine offered Getsy and two other defendants $5000 to kill business rival Charles Serafino because of a…

The stage play of Tim Robbins’ Academy Award winning film, Dead Man Walking, is available to colleges and universities across the country. The play is based on the acclaimed book of the same title by Sister Helen Prejean. Through the Dead Man Walking School Theatre Project, the play provides an opportunity to broaden discussion about the death penalty and involve schools and their local communities in an inter-disciplinary dialogue about this major social issue. The Theatre Project’s new Web…

Although New York’s death penalty was overturned by the state’s high court in 2004, and the legislature has not reinstated it, the federal government has sought the death penalty more in New York than in any other state except Virginia. However, none of the federal cases has resulted in a death sentence. Since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, thirty-seven federal capital cases have been authorized in New York, compared with 50 in Virginia and 385 nationwide, according to data…