Publications & Testimony

Daryl Mack, who repeatedly noted that he would rather be executed than spend the next 20 years of his life on death row pursuing legal appeals, was executed Wednesday for a 1988 murder in Reno. Mack was convicted in 2002. He was the 12^th person executed in Nevada since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977, and the 11^th to waive remaining appeals at the time of execution. He was the first black man to be executed in the Nevada since executions resumed in the state. On the same day that…

The percentage of federal death penalty cases resulting in death sentences has declined from the 1990s to the present. Since 1991, juries chose a death sentence in 51 cases compared with 93 cases that ended with a sentence of life in prison, according to Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel, a rate of 35% for death sentences. Since 2000, juries have returned 29 death sentences and 69 life sentences, a rate of 30%. (Washington Post, April 25, 2006).

Marking the 50^th anniversary of the United Methodist Church’s public call for an end to the death penalty, the church’s General Board of Church and Society recently issued a statement echoing the sentiments of the church’s original call for abolition and urging all United Methodists “to practice transformative love, to comfort the victims of crime, to humanize those convicted of crime, and to advocate for an end to the death penalty in our criminal justice system.” The statement comes five…

Amnesty International’s most recent death penalty report, “The Death Penalty Worldwide: Developments in 2005,” revealed a substantial drop in recorded executions around the world, as well as a growing number of nations that have abandoned the death penalty. According to the report, four nations accounted for 94% of the 2,148 recorded executions carried out around the world in 2005, a total that is significantly less than the 3,797 executions recorded in 2004 (however, in many countries the…

A new report issued by Human Rights Watch today notes that most U.S. states use execution methods that needlessly risk excruciating pain for inmates subjected to lethal injections. The report, “So Long as They Die: Lethal Injections in the United States,” examines the history of lethal injections and the widespread use of protocols that were created three decades ago with no scientific research. “The U.S. takes more care killing dogs than people. Just because a prisoner may have killed without…

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, a blue-ribbon panel established by the state legislature to study and review the death penalty and related matters in California, has proposed significant changes in the use of eyewitness identification in California courts. The commission called on legislators to pass a bill requiring the attorney general’s office to convene a task force to develop guidelines for new procedures and trainings in eyewitness identification. It also…

Philippine President Gloria Macapagel-Arroyo (pictured) ordered the commutation of all death sentences to life in prison, an order that will spare the lives of the 1,205 people on death row. As her nation marked Easter Sunday, she issued the clemencies: “I wish to announce that we are changing our policy on those who have been imposed the death penalty. We are reducing their penalty to life imprisonment. Anyone who falls and makes mistakes has a chance to stand up and correct the wrong he has…

In a letter issued prior to Easter, the Catholic Bishops in Missouri called for an end to executions in the U.S. and urged parishioners to “build a culture of life.” The letter noted that violence “is not a solution to society’s problems,” and it summarized church teachings regarding capital punishment and highlighted a campaign by U.S. Catholic Bishops to end the use of the death penalty. “(Christ) was unjustly sentenced to death and executed on a cross, the cruelest form of capital punishment…