Publications & Testimony

According to a recent news report, Indiana tax­pay­ers spend mil­lions of dol­lars to send dozens of peo­ple to death row, but more than half of those sen­tenced have had their con­vic­tions over­turned or their sen­tences vacat­ed. In addi­tion, the ris­ing costs of the death penal­ty have result­ed in a more arbi­trary appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment due to fund­ing con­straints in cer­tain rur­al coun­ties, a fact that has many state res­i­dents ques­tion­ing the pun­ish­men­t’s true val­ue. Defense expenses in…

With bipar­ti­san sup­port, Ohio’s House of Representatives passed a bill to cre­ate an 18-mem­ber com­mit­tee to con­duct an exhaus­tive study of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state. Under the bill, which passed by a vote of 64 – 30 in the Republican-con­trolled House, the com­mit­tee would exam­ine all cap­i­tal tri­als since the state rein­stat­ed the pun­ish­ment in 1981. The com­mit­tee would exam­ine issues such as race, gen­der, and the eco­nom­ic sta­tus of defen­dants and their vic­tims. It would also investigate…

Former Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Blackmar recent­ly reit­er­at­ed his oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty and his con­cerns about wrong­ful con­vic­tions, not­ing that the exon­er­a­tion of Missouri death row inmate Joseph Amrine ​“makes me won­der how many peo­ple there are who were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed.” Amrine spent 26 years in prison, 17 of them on death row, before his con­vic­tion was over­turned and he was released in July 2003. ​“The les­son is that peo­ple were persuaded eventually…

The lat­est edi­tion of The American Prospect fea­tures a series of arti­cles by promi­nent writ­ers and human rights lead­ers regard­ing the effect of the inter­na­tion­al move­ment for human rights on the U.S. Two of the arti­cles high­light U.S. death penal­ty poli­cies. Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh points out the con­flict between the U.S.‘s efforts to sup­port inter­na­tion­al human rights and our domes­tic prac­tices such as the use of the juve­nile death penal­ty. ​“In my view, by far the most…

WHO SUPPORTS THE DEATH…

Mirroring sta­tis­tics released this year in the Death Penalty Information Center’s Innocence Report, the Justice Department’s Capital Punishment, 2003 revealed that the nation’s death row is con­tin­u­ing to decline and that the amount of time between death sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion has increased. Compiled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the report not­ed that 3,374 inmates were on death row at the con­clu­sion of 2003, 188 few­er than a year ear­li­er. It also…

A mur­der charge against Louis Greco was final­ly dis­missed by Massachusetts author­i­ties 9 years after he died in prison. According to the Associated Press, in 2000, a Justice Department task force uncov­ered secret F.B.I. mem­o­ran­da show­ing that Mr. Greco and three co-defen­dants, Peter J. Limone, Joseph Salvati, and Edward Tameleo, had been wrong­ly con­vict­ed of a mur­der that occurred in 1965 based on per­jured tes­ti­mo­ny. (Limone had been sen­tenced to death, but was lat­er released and exonerated…

Based at the State University of New York’s Albany cam­pus, the Capital Punishment Research Initiative (CPRI) is ded­i­cat­ed to con­duct­ing and sup­port­ing empir­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal stud­ies of the death penal­ty. CPRI research is con­duct­ed by the University’s grad­u­ate stu­dents and pro­fes­sors, as well as by col­lab­o­rat­ing researchers from around the coun­try. The cen­ter’s current projects…

Scott Christianson’s new book, Innocent: Inside Wrongful Conviction Cases, exam­ines mis­takes in New York’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem with an empha­sis on mis­tak­en iden­ti­fi­ca­tions, per­jury by eye­wit­ness­es, inef­fec­tive coun­sel, false con­fes­sions, and police and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. The book includes a log of the state’s wrong­ful con­vic­tion cas­es, includ­ing some cap­i­tal cas­es. Christianson reminds read­ers, ​“Unfortunately, not much is known about the cur­rent nature and extent of wrongful…