Publications & Testimony

A recent Philadelphia Inquirer edi­to­r­i­al crit­i­cized the pro­posed ​“Streamlined Procedures Act,” fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion that would deny or sharply restrict the reach of fed­er­al judges in hear­ing habeas-cor­pus claims from those on death row. Noting that the mea­sure would increase the pos­si­bil­i­ty of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son, the edi­to­r­i­al stat­ed: Amid Washington law­mak­ers’ lat­est dri­ve to fur­ther restrict the appeals of (cap­i­tal) defen­dants, they need to rec­og­nize what could be at risk with…

The fed­er­al death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1988 with a lim­it­ed statute for mur­ders in the course of a drug con­spir­a­cy. It was expand­ed to 60 offens­es in 1994 and includ­ed crimes such as car­jack­ing and dri­ve-by shoot­ings if a death results. During the Clinton admin­is­tra­tion, no one from a non-death penal­ty state was sen­tenced to death. Since 2000, there have been at least 5 indi­vid­u­als in non-death states who have received death sen­tences: 2 in Iowa (Dustin Honken and Angela Johnson), 1 in…

Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney recent­ly tes­ti­fied that the pro­posed ​“fool­proof” death penal­ty statute he hopes will bring cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment back to the state does not elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­i­ty that an inno­cent per­son could be exe­cut­ed. Romney acknowl­edged to mem­bers of the joint House and Senate Judiciary Committee that the pro­posed law can­not pro­tect the state against the poten­tial for human error, stat­ing, ​“A 100 per­cent guar­an­tee? I don’t think there’s such a thing in life. Except…

More than a decade after juve­nile offend­er Martin Soto Fong and two oth­er men were tried and sen­tenced to death in Arizona, ques­tions about Fong’s guilt linger and are under­scored by the fact that he is the only one of the three men to remain con­vict­ed of the crime. The pros­e­cu­tor who won their con­vic­tions, Kenneth Peasley, was dis­barred last year for inten­tion­al­ly elic­it­ing false tes­ti­mo­ny to win cap­i­tal mur­der con­vic­tions in the re-tri­als of Soto’s co-defen­dants, Christopher McCrimmon and…

The Reverend Carroll Pickett, for­mer chap­lain on death row in…

A vari­ety of legal experts and nation­al orga­ni­za­tions have expressed strong con­cerns about a bill intro­duced in Congress that would great­ly lim­it fed­er­al review of death penal­ty cas­es. The American Bar Association called for rejec­tion of the leg­is­la­tion: S. 1088 should not be enact­ed. Its pri­ma­ry effect would be to insure that the fed­er­al courts did not hear com­pelling claims – includ­ing claims of actu­al inno­cence. Any pos­si­ble gain in speed would be off­set by the cer­tain loss of jus­tice. As…

Following an inves­ti­ga­tion indi­cat­ing that Missouri may have exe­cut­ed an inno­cent man for the 1980 mur­der of Quintin Moss, New York Times colum­nist Bob Herbert wrote that the case was filled with prob­lems that are typ­i­cal of wrong­ful con­vic­tions in cap­i­tal cas­es. Herbert stat­ed that St. Louis cir­cuit attor­ney Jennifer Joyce has tak­en ​“the extra­or­di­nary step of offi­cial­ly reopen­ing a mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion after the defen­dant was exe­cut­ed,” adding that it is dif­fi­cult to prove that an innocent…

A year-long inves­ti­ga­tion by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund has uncov­ered evi­dence that Larry Griffin may have been inno­cent of the crime for which he was exe­cut­ed by the state of Missouri on June 21, 1995. Griffin main­tained his inno­cence until his death, and inves­ti­ga­tors say his case is the strongest demon­stra­tion yet of an exe­cu­tion of an inno­cent man. The report notes that a man injured in the same dri­ve-by shoot­ing that claimed the life of Quintin Moss says Griffin was not…

The U.S. Supreme Court grant­ed a last minute stay for Robin Lovitt, who was sched­uled for exe­cu­tion at 9 PM on Monday (July 11) in Virginia. The Court did not give a rea­son for the stay, but Lovitt stat­ed that he would have been able to show his inno­cence if state offi­cials had not destroyed DNA evi­dence from his case after his tri­al. (See item below post­ed July 8). (Associated Press, July 11, 2005). See also…