Publications & Testimony

By a vote of 104 – 37, mem­bers of the Texas House of Representatives ten­ta­tive­ly approved the sen­tenc­ing option of life-with­out-parole in death penal­ty cas­es, an his­toric action that puts the state clos­er to includ­ing a sen­tenc­ing alter­na­tive offered in near­ly every death penal­ty state. The House is expect­ed to give final pas­sage to the mea­sure on May 25 and the Texas Senate, which passed sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion ear­li­er this year, is expect­ed to approve an amend­ed mea­sure before send­ing the bill to…

In its annu­al report on human rights around the world, Amnesty International not­ed the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in five nations in 2004. Last year, Bhutan, Greece, Samoa, Senegal and Turkey joined a grow­ing list of coun­tries that have aban­doned cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for all crimes. The report stat­ed that such changes are pos­i­tive signs, not­ing: ​“Global activism is a dynam­ic and grow­ing force. It is also the best hope of achiev­ing free­dom and jus­tice for all human­i­ty.” The report covers 149…

The May/​June issue of Foreign Policy mag­a­zine includes an arti­cle on the death penal­ty in Japan by Charles Lane, Supreme Court reporter for The Washington Post. Lane notes that Japan’s death penal­ty is shroud­ed in secre­cy and cul­mi­nates in exe­cu­tions out­side of all pub­lic view. He pro­vides read­ers with a rare look inside this sys­tem and com­pares that coun­try’s poli­cies with U.S. prac­tices and inter­na­tion­al trends. The arti­cle, ​“A View to a Kill,” notes that although death sentences are…

The Supreme Court today dis­missed as ​“improv­i­dent­ly grant­ed” the case of Jose Medellin, a Mexican nation­al on death row in Texas pri­mar­i­ly because President Bush has interevened and ordered state courts to abide by a rul­ing from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In an unsigned deci­sion, the Justices decid­ed not to review this case as a mat­ter of fed­er­al habeas cor­pus law. They did note, how­ev­er, that once this mat­ter is reviewed in Texas state courts, the U.S. Supreme Court ​“would in…

SUPREME COURT DECLINES TO RULE ON RIGHTS OF FOREIGN NATIONALS ON DEATH ROW The Supreme Court today dis­missed as ​“improv­i­dent­ly grant­ed” the case of Jose Medellin, a Mexican nation­al on death row in Texas. In an unsigned deci­sion, jus­tices dis­missed as pre­ma­ture the case in which Medellin argued that an opin­ion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) enti­tled him and the 50 Mexican for­eign nation­als on death row in the United States to a hear­ing on whether their rights were violated under…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that a man whose attor­ney slept through por­tions of his 1992 death penal­ty tri­al should not get a new tri­al because he had anoth­er less expe­ri­enced attor­ney who remained awake. In its rul­ing, the Court denied George McFarland’s claim of inef­fec­tive­ness of coun­sel and upheld his death sen­tence. ​“We con­clude that, although one of his attor­neys slept through por­tions of his tri­al, appli­cant was not deprived of the assis­tance of coun­sel under the…

The lat­est Gallup Poll found sup­port for the death penal­ty at 74%, a fig­ure equal to the lev­el in 2003 and less than the 80% sup­port reg­is­tered in 1994. The poll found that sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment dropped to 56% when respon­dents were giv­en the alter­na­tive sen­tenc­ing option of life with­out parole, less than the 61% sup­port in 1997 with the same ques­tion. The per­cent­age of respon­dents who believe an inno­cent per­son has been exe­cut­ed in recent years has dropped from 73% in 2003 to 59%…

A diverse and bipar­ti­san group of more than 150 promi­nent North Carolinians have urged the General Assembly to pass a mea­sure that would halt exe­cu­tions for two years while a study com­mis­sion exam­ines the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. A let­ter to the state’s top polit­i­cal lead­ers urg­ing pas­sage of the mora­to­ri­um bill was signed by the group, which includ­ed nine for­mer North Carolina Supreme Court Justices, for­mer pros­e­cu­tors, elect­ed offi­cials, reli­gious lead­ers, busi­ness lead­ers, murder…

A new study from the Texas Defender Service calls for sub­stan­tial changes in the way Texas han­dles cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es. The report rec­om­mends that Texas imple­ment a series of reforms, includ­ing uni­form inves­ti­ga­tion pro­ce­dures, a life-with­out-parole sen­tenc­ing option, and a statewide pub­lic defend­er’s office. Drawing from rec­om­men­da­tions made by the blue-rib­bon Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment that was estab­lished to address wrong­ful con­vic­tions in that state, the Texas Defender…

A new research paper by Wayne A. Logan of the William Mitchell College of Law exam­ines the con­sti­tu­tion­al, eth­i­cal and legal issues raised by vic­tim impact evi­dence. In his arti­cle, ​“Victims, Survivors and the Decisions to Seek and Impose Death,” Logan notes that the U.S. Supreme Court’s land­mark 1991 deci­sion in Payne v. Tennessee opened the door for sur­vivors of mur­der vic­tims to tes­ti­fy about the social, emo­tion­al, and eco­nom­ic loss­es result­ing from the mur­der of their loved one. Since…