Publications & Testimony

Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America’s Death Row, by Professor David Dow, is a behind-the-scenes look at the death penal­ty through the lens of an attor­ney who for­mer­ly sup­port­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Dow, who teach­es at the University of Houston Law Center and found­ed the Texas Innocence Network, pro­vides case his­to­ries illus­trat­ing seri­ous flaws in the death penal­ty sys­tem. He uses these cas­es to guide read­ers through a web of coerced…

The Louisiana Supreme Court recent­ly ruled that tri­al judges can halt pros­e­cu­tions of poor defen­dants until the state comes up with the mon­ey to pay for an ade­quate defense. Louisiana has in the past failed to ade­quate­ly fund indi­gent defense pro­grams.​“I think it’s a warn­ing,” said Phyllis Mann, appoint­ed coun­sel for Benjamin Tonguis and Adrian Citizen, two death penal­ty defen­dants whose cas­es were reviewed by the state supreme court.​“The court is say­ing as plainly as…

An Arizona court has over­turned the con­vic­tion of death row inmate Clarence Hill because of new DNA evi­dence. The court not­ed that,​“It is more like­ly than not that no rea­son­able juror would have con­vict­ed Mr. Hill in light of the present DNA evi­dence.” Hill has spent 15 years on death row for the mur­der of his land­lord, but new DNA tests have revealed that the vic­tim was not the source of the blood found on Hill’s cloth­ing and bed­sheets dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion. The…

The Nebraska Supreme Court has agreed to con­sid­er whether the state’s use of the elec­tric chair is cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. The case, brought by death row inmate Carey Dean Moore, will be heard on May 5. Every oth­er death penal­ty state has adopt­ed lethal injec­tion as an alter­na­tive method of exe­cu­tion. A bill to offer lethal injec­tion in Nebraska remains stalled in the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee. Three peo­ple have been put to death in Nebraska since executions…

Attorney Barry Scheck plans to ask Texas Governor Rick Perry to order DNA test­ing in the case of Claude Jones, who main­tained his inno­cence until his exe­cu­tion in December 2000. Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, says Jones’ con­vic­tion was large­ly based on dubi­ous evi­dence. The state’s case against him includ­ed tes­ti­mo­ny from an accom­plice link­ing Jones to the crime and the report of a state foren­sic sci­en­tist who exam­ined a one-inch length of hair found at the…

A Franklin County, Kentucky, court will hear argu­ments begin­ning April 18 to deter­mine whether the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures rise to the lev­el of cru­el­ty that is for­bid­den by the U.S. and state con­sti­tu­tions. In November 2004, the same court cit­ed ques­tions about the lethal injec­tion process when it issued a stay of exe­cu­tion for Thomas Clyde Bowling, Jr. just days before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion. Attorneys for Bowling and death row inmate Ralph Baze, who is…

In sep­a­rate plea agree­ments with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and Georgia pros­e­cu­tors, Eric Rudolph admit­ted killing two peo­ple and injur­ing 150 oth­ers by car­ry­ing out a series bomb­ings at a gay night­club, abor­tion clin­ics, and the 1996 Olympics, and will serve four con­sec­u­tive life sen­tences with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. Prosecutors spared Rudolph from exe­cu­tion in exchange for his guilty pleas and his reveal­ing the loca­tion of about 250 pounds of dynamite he…

A team of med­ical doc­tors report­ed in the British med­ical jour­nal The Lancet that in 43 of 49 exe­cut­ed inmates (88%) stud­ied, the anaes­thet­ic admin­is­tered dur­ing lethal injec­tions was low­er than that required for surgery. Toxicology reports from Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina revealed that post-mortem con­cen­tra­tions of thiopen­tal in the blood were below typ­i­cal surgery lev­els, and in 21 inmates (43%) the con­cen­tra­tions of thiopen­tal in the blood…

The Codes Committee of the New York Assembly has vot­ed 11 – 7 against con­sid­er­ing leg­is­la­tion to re-instate the death penal­ty in New York, a deci­sion that like­ly ends such efforts dur­ing this leg­isla­tive term. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has recent­ly voiced con­cerns about the death penal­ty and has shift­ed his stance away from sup­port­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. New York’s cur­rent death penal­ty law was passed in 1995 but declared invalid by a rul­ing from the state’s…

Veteran New York leg­is­la­tor John R. Dunne vot­ed for the death penal­ty 12 times dur­ing his tenure in the New York Senate. He then went on to serve as an assis­tant attor­ney gen­er­al at the U.S. Department of Justice. But his con­cerns about the fair­ness and accu­ra­cy of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have now result­ed in his oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty. In an op-ed appear­ing in the New York Daily News, Dunne wrote:As a mem­ber of the New York Senate from 1966 to 1989, I voted 12…