Publications & Testimony

Former FBI Chief and fed­er­al judge William Sessions recent­ly joined two oth­er for­mer fed­er­al judges and a pros­e­cu­tor urg­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to con­sid­er an appeal from Ohio death row inmate John Spirko. In their brief, Sessions and his col­leagues assert that the pros­e­cu­tion argued a the­o­ry at Spirko’s tri­al that it had to know was at least part­ly sus­pect.​“When the ulti­mate penal­ty is at issue, jus­tice demands scrupu­lous con­duct from pros­e­cu­tors. It is not…

The Chair of the Judiciary Committee of the New York Assembly recent­ly voiced her strong con­cerns about the state’s death penal­ty. Although she sup­port­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ear­li­er, Assemblywoman Helene E. Weinstein spoke about the evo­lu­tion in her think­ing and her par­tic­u­lar con­cerns about the risk of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent:​“It was an evo­lu­tion­ary process. But clear­ly the advent of DNA evi­dence and the dra­mat­ic num­ber of indi­vid­u­als who have been…

Capital Consequences: Families of the Condemned Tell Their Stories is a new book by Rachel King of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project. The book focus­es on the impact that the death penal­ty has on the fam­i­lies of those who have been con­demned to die. King, who also wrote​“Don’t Kill in Our Names: Families of Murder Victims Speak Out Against the Death Penalty,” describes these indi­vid­u­als as the unseen…

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…

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:…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…