Publications & Testimony

Death row inmates from around the coun­try will present a $5,000 col­lege schol­ar­ship to Zach Osborne, the broth­er of a 4‑year-old mur­der vic­tim, who plans to attend East Carolina University to pur­sue a career in law enforce­ment. The schol­ar­ship is an annu­al award giv­en by those on death row who par­tic­i­pate in the pub­li­ca­tion of​“Compassion,” a newslet­ter that pro­vides a forum for com­mu­ni­ca­tion between con­vict­ed offend­ers and mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. Each year,…

A recent inves­ti­ga­tion led by a for­mer Justice Department offi­cial report­ed that ana­lysts at the Houston Crime Lab fab­ri­cat­ed find­ings in at least four drug cas­es, includ­ing one in which a sci­en­tist failed to con­duct test­ing before issu­ing con­clu­sions to sup­port police sus­pi­cions — an ille­gal prac­tice known as​“dry­lab­bing.” The report con­tains some of the most seri­ous alle­ga­tions made yet against the Houston Crime Lab and is the first to crit­i­cize the lab’s…

In a pro­posed amend­ment to its penal code, Indian lead­ers are seek­ing to imple­ment a change that would end the nation’s death penal­ty even​“in the rarest of rare” cas­es. The amend­ed Indian Penal Code would abol­ish the death penal­ty and replace it with a strict life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole mea­sure. Currently, the nation’s life sen­tence statute only requires impris­on­ment for 14 years. The deci­sion to seek an offi­cial end to cap­i­tal punishment fulfills…

On May 31, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to con­sid­er the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Kansas’ death penal­ty law. The cur­rent statute requires that a death sen­tence be imposed when a jury finds that the aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the crime have equal weight (i.e., a tie results in death). When review­ing Michael Marsh’s death sen­tence in 2004, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the state’s statute was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, hold­ing that the…

The North Carolina House of Representatives will soon vote on a two-year mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the state while the death penal­ty is stud­ied. A mora­to­ri­um bill passed the full Senate in 2003, but had been pre­vi­ous­ly blocked from com­ing to a vote in the House. The House Judiciary Committee will like­ly con­sid­er the mora­to­ri­um mea­sure on Tuesday, May 31. The com­mit­tee’s approval could mean a full House vote on the leg­is­la­tion as ear­ly as that same day. The full…

The Empty Chair: Death Penalty Yes or No is a doc­u­men­tary film pro­duced and direct­ed by Jacqui Lofaro and Victor Teich that tells the sto­ries of four fam­i­lies con­fronting the loss of loved ones and voic­ing dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on the death penal­ty. The movie also fea­tures Sister Helen Prejean, an author and spir­i­tu­al advi­sor to those con­demned to die, and Donald Cabana (pic­tured), a for­mer death row warden…

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…

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…

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…

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.