Publications & Testimony

A recent study of 18 juve­nile offend­ers on death row in Texas found that near­ly all par­tic­i­pants expe­ri­enced seri­ous head trau­mas in child­hood and ado­les­cence, came from extreme­ly vio­lent and/​or abu­sive fam­i­lies, had one or more severe men­tal ill­ness­es, and had signs of pre­frontal brain dys­func­tion. The study, con­duct­ed by Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis of Yale along with oth­er experts, sug­gests that most of the juve­nile offend­ers on America’s death rows suffer from…

Justice Raoul Cantero (pic­tured), recent­ly appoint­ed to Florida’s Supreme Court by Gov. Jeb Bush, crit­i­cized the qual­i­ty of pri­vate lawyers han­dling the appeals of death row inmates, not­ing that some attor­neys have botched cas­es, mud­dled and omit­ted key argu­ments, and gen­er­al­ly per­formed​“the worst lawyer­ing I’ve seen.” He also seri­ous­ly ques­tioned Governor Bush’s effort to replace the state-run region­al offices that han­dle death penal­ty appeals with private…

A retired prison war­den, vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers, and a for­mer death row inmate were among the near­ly 75 speak­ers at a state Judiciary Committee hear­ing in Hartford, almost all of whom pro­posed end­ing Connecticut’s death penal­ty. Many of the wit­ness­es not­ed that the death penal­ty brings no relief to vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers, fails to deter mur­der, risks inno­cent lives, and is applied in an arbi­trary way.​“I’m here to tell you that I nev­er met an inmate for whom I had…

DPIC has added a new easy-to-use state data­base of death penal­ty infor­ma­tion to its Web site. In addi­tion, Richard Dieter’s (DPIC’s Executive Director) tes­ti­mo­ny before the New York State Assembly Standing Committees on Codes, Judiciary, and Correction regard­ing the costs of the death penal­ty is also avail­able. The Committees are hold­ing hear­ings on whether New York should re-instate the death penal­ty. To access infor­ma­tion on any state’s death row pop­u­la­tion, the number…

Judge Patrick Higginbotham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit called on Texas to pay more than​‘lip ser­vice’ to pro­vid­ing indi­vid­u­als fac­ing the death penal­ty with a tru­ly fair and con­sti­tu­tion­al tri­al. He stat­ed that more resources must be placed on train­ing attor­neys and judges at the tri­al lev­el in order to pro­tect against exe­cut­ing the inno­cent. Higginbotham, writ­ing along with attor­ney Mark Curriden of Vinson & Elkins, not­ed that during the…

A fed­er­al appeals court has ruled that Ohio must either retry British for­eign nation­al Kenny Richey with­in 90 days or free him from death row. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6^th Circuit threw out Richey’s 1987 con­vic­tion and death sen­tence in the arson death of 2‑year-old Cynthia Collins, rul­ing that pros­e­cu­tors failed to offer suf­fi­cient evi­dence of Richey’s guilt. The court also found that his court-appoint­ed attor­ney was​“out­side the wide range of professionally…

Former Illinois death row inmate Steven Manning (pic­tured) has been award­ed $6.6 mil­lion in a civ­il law­suit against two FBI agents. A jury found that the agents had framed Manning twice, includ­ing once for mur­der. The jury found FBI agents Robert Buchan and Gary Miller liable of con­coct­ing evi­dence to frame Manning, their one-time infor­mant and a for­mer Chicago police offi­cer, in the mur­der of a truck­ing firm exec­u­tive and in the kid­nap­ping of two Missouri drug dealers.

New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver voiced seri­ous doubts about the neces­si­ty for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in light of its high cost and the alter­na­tive sen­tenc­ing option of life with­out parole. Silver, who sup­port­ed the death penal­ty in the past, said: ​“I have some doubt whether we need a death penal­ty.… We are spend­ing tens of mil­lions of dol­lars [that] may be bet­ter spent on edu­cat­ing chil­dren.” He also remarked that the life-with­­out-parole statute the state…

On Thursday, January 27, a movie based on the acclaimed play​“The Exonerated” will air on Court TV at 9 p.m. EST. The movie fea­tures award-win­n­ing actors Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover, Aidan Quinn, Brian Dennehy, Delroy Lindo, and David Brown, Jr. giv­ing voice to the trou­bling sto­ries of six per­sons orig­i­nal­ly con­demned to death but who have since been freed from death row. It fol­lows the orig­i­nal the­ater script by Jessica Blank…

A three-part series appear­ing in the Cleveland Plain Dealer exam­ines the cap­i­tal con­vic­tion of John Spirko, who remains on Ohio’s death row for the 1982 mur­der of Elgin, Ohio post­mas­ter Betty Jane Mottinger. The paper’s inves­ti­ga­tion found that Spirko’s imag­i­na­tion and​“not much else” had brought him to the brink of exe­cu­tion despite con­cerns of his inno­cence. Shortly after Mottinger’s body was found, Spirko vol­un­tar­i­ly con­tact­ed police to provide…