Publications & Testimony

Texas should over­haul its exec­u­tive clemen­cy process to ensure a fair and equi­table jus­tice sys­tem, accord­ing to a new report by Texas Appleseed and the Texas Innocence Network. The report, ​“The Quality of Mercy — Safeguarding Justice in Texas Through Clemency Reform,” offers a series of rec­om­men­da­tions intend­ed to improve the process, includ­ing hold­ing pub­lic hear­ings in clemen­cy cas­es, estab­lish­ing stan­dards and objec­tive cri­te­ria that can be used to guide clemen­cy deci­sions, granting…

LATEST DATA FROM ​“DEATH ROW USA” SHOW CONTINUING DECLINE The January 1, 2005 fig­ures from ​“Death Row USA,” a pub­li­ca­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Capital Punishment Project, show anoth­er decline in the num­ber of inmates on death rows across the U.S. A com­par­i­son with pre­vi­ous issues of this pub­li­ca­tion show the trend: Date Size of Death Row Jan. 1, 2003 3,692 Jan. 1, 2004 3,503 Oct. 1, 2004 3,471 Jan. 1, 2005 3,455 Other Recent Data: Largest Death Rows: California — 639 Texas -…

New York’s dor­mant death penal­ty law fails to meet the min­i­mum stan­dards rec­om­mend­ed to ensure accu­ra­cy and fair­ness, accord­ing to a new report issued by the Committee on Capital Punishment of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. Based on a com­par­i­son of New York’s exist­ing statute to stan­dards estab­lished by expert com­mit­tees in Illinois and Massachusetts, the Committee urged New York law­mak­ers to thor­ough­ly ana­lyze the state’s statute in light of emerg­ing information about…

Kansas law­mak­ers have decid­ed not to vote on a pro­posed fix to the state’s death penal­ty statute, a deci­sion that could put the future of the law in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2004, the Kansas Supreme Court over­turned the death penal­ty because of the way jurors were instruct­ed in cap­i­tal cas­es. Some leg­is­la­tors are hop­ing that the U.S. Supreme Court will reverse the Kansas court’s deci­sion. It could be months before the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to take the case. Until…

Retired New York prison super­in­ten­dent Stephen Dalsheim recent­ly cau­tioned leg­is­la­tors about re-instat­ing the death penal­ty, not­ing his con­cerns about inno­cence and the toll exe­cu­tions take on prison employ­ees. ​“You know, as I grow old­er, I real­ize maybe we can get beyond vengeance,” Dalsheim said. ​“The death penal­ty is fraught with the pos­si­bil­i­ty that you could exe­cute an inno­cent man. Who could live with that?” Dalsheim tes­ti­fied before a pan­el of state law­mak­ers con­sid­er­ing whether to try…

By a vote of 5 – 4, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared the exe­cu­tion of juve­nile offend­ers to be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Today’s his­toric rul­ing in Roper v. Simmons holds that this prac­tice vio­lates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ments. The deci­sion will result in a new sen­tence for Christopher Simmons and like­ly new sen­tences for the 71 oth­er juve­nile offend­ers cur­rent­ly on state death rows across the coun­try. Simmons’ posi­tion was joined by many professional organizations…

Deterrence and the Death Penalty: A Critical Review of New Evidence con­tains the tes­ti­mo­ny of Professor Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia University Law School that he deliv­ered to the New York State Assembly’s Standing Committees on Codes, Judiciary, and Correction on January 25, 2005. Read the tes­ti­mo­ny in PDF Format…

A recent New York Times poll found that 56% of sur­veyed New York vot­ers pre­fer a sen­tence of life in prison (either with­out parole or with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole) over the death penal­ty for peo­ple con­vict­ed of mur­der. Only 34% said they sup­port­ed the death penal­ty, a sig­nif­i­cant drop from the 48% who sup­port­ed it in 1994, just pri­or to New York’s rein­state­ment of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. This shift against the death penal­ty comes as state law­mak­ers are con­sid­er­ing whether to aban­don or try to…

A new American Bar Association study has found that thou­sands of sus­pects, includ­ing some who are lat­er giv­en death sen­tences, risk wrong­ful con­vic­tion because they are pres­sured to accept guilty pleas or have incom­pe­tent attor­neys. After sur­vey­ing 22 states, the ABA com­mit­tee lead­ing the study stat­ed that legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for indi­gent defen­dants is in ​“a state of crisis.“In its report, the ABA fea­tured a num­ber of wrong­ful con­vic­tion cas­es, includ­ing the recent release of Lousiana death…

Three-quar­ters of Americans believe that an inno­cent per­son has been exe­cut­ed with­in the last five years and that con­vic­tion is result­ing in low­er lev­els of sup­port for the death penal­ty, accord­ing to a study pub­lished in the February issue of Criminology & Public Policy. The study, con­duct­ed by researchers James D. Unnever of Radford University and Francis T. Cullen of the University of Cincinnati, found that sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er among both blacks and…