Publications & Testimony

An ongoing review of DNA tests conducted by the Houston Police Department has revealed “severe and pervasive problems” with the lab’s findings in more than two dozen cases, including three death penalty cases. The new report released by independent investigator Michael Bromwich, who is reviewing more than 1,100 Houston Police Department DNA cases analyzed between 1987 and 2002, also linked the DNA lab’s troubles to “very disturbing problems” within the Houston Police Department’s serology…

Support for restoration of the death penalty in Great Britain, even when the murder victim is a police officer, has fallen below 50% for the first time since its abolition four decades ago. According to a YouGov poll conducted for The Daily Telegraph, the number of people who oppose capital punishment even when the victim is a police officer has risen to 43%. The figure is a dramatic changed from the 20% who voiced opposition to the death penalty in a 1960 poll conducted by Gallup. Only 49% of…

A Virginia judge ruled that prosecutors may not seek the death penalty against a Vietnamese man accused of murdering two people because police violated the man’s rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by not informing him that he could contact his country’s consulate. “[T]he duty to give notice is absolute… . [T]he idea that the state can completely ignore its treaty obligations without consequence essentially obliterates the purpose for which the rights under the Vienna…

Amidst widespread suspicion that innocent people have been sentenced to death or executed, China has announced that reforming its death penalty system is a priority and it is implementing procedural changes to protect against wrongful convictions. In October 2005, the People’s Supreme Court announced that it would reverse a decision from the early 1980’s that gave final review on many death penalty cases to provincial high courts. Under the new policy, the People’s Supreme Court would reclaim…

Former California Supreme Court Justice Joseph Grodin and former San Quentin warden Daniel Vasquez are urging California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemency to Clarence Ray Allen. Allen, who will turn 76 just a day before his scheduled execution on January 17, is blind and disabled, conditions that his attorneys have argued would make his execution cruel and unusual punishment. In a letter to Schwarzenegger, Grodin, who authored the court’s 1986 opinion upholding Allen’s…

A recent public opinion poll of Australians found that 69% of respondents believe the penalty for murder should be imprisonment, while only 25% of those polled stated it should be the death penalty. The poll, conducted by Roy Morgan International just one week after an Australian citizen was executed by Singapore for possessing less than a half a kilogram of heroin, revealed that public support for capital punishment is continuing to decline in Australia. In November 2005, the same poll found…

The Washington Post editorialized about the death penalty in 2005, commenting on many of the points made in DPIC’s Year End Report: [T]he overall tendency is unmistakable: At least for now, with crime and murder rates low and the threat of wrongful convictions on people’s minds, the death penalty does not have the same attraction that it once had. Finally ending the death penalty in America, however, will not happen quickly. Despite any number of DNA exonerations and some serious questions…

Former Death Row Inmate Acquitted at Re-Trial A jury in Arizona acquitted Christopher Huerstel of first-degree murder and of attempted armed robbery of a Tucson pizzeria in which 3 people were killed. Huerstel, who was 17-years-old at the time the crime was committed, was orignally convicted along with a co-defendant and both were sentenced to death in 2001. His conviction was overturned by the Arizona Supreme Court because of errors by the trial judge. The jury at the re-trial was unable to…

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 victims of capital punishment and highlights the experience of having loved ones on death row…

“Hidden Victims,” a new book by sociologist Susan F. Sharp of the University of Oklahoma, examines the impact of capital punishment on the families of those facing execution. Through a series of in-depth interviews with families of the accused, Sharp illustrates from a sociological standpoint how family members and friends of those on death row are, in effect, indirect victims of the initial crime. The book emphasizes their responses to sentencing, as well as how they grieve and face an…