Publications & Testimony

The entire current edition of Congressional Quarterly’s CQ Researcher is devoted to a comprehensive look at the death penalty in the U.S. This special CQ report, authored by Kenneth Jost and entitled “Death Penalty Controversies,” explores the history of the U.S. death penalty and changing public opinion about its use. It also looks at the current status of state moratorium developments, the continuing decline in U.S. executions, state responses to the Supreme Court’s ban on executing the…

RACE AND THE DEATH PENALTY IN CALIFORNIA A recent study to be published in the Santa Clara Law Review found that the race of the victim in the underlying murder greatly affected whether a defendant would be sentenced to death. Generally, there are more Hispanic and African American victims of murder in California: —California Murder Victims 1990 – 1999 — Office of Vital Statistics; based on murders where race of victim was known; Whites, African American, and Other are non-Hispanic members of…

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed yesterday to review the case of a death row inmate from South Carolina who was denied the opportunity at trial to present evidence of the possible guilt of another person. In Holmes v. South Carolina, No. 04 – 1327, the Court will consider whether the state’s rules regarding such evidence deprived Holmes of his due process rights to present a complete defense. In 2004, the South Carolina Supreme Court had ruled that the state’s evidence against Holmes was so strong…

The Judicial Conference of the United States, the policy making body of the nation’s federal judges, wrote a strong letter to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee opposing parts of the Streamlined Procedures Act (S.1088) that would curtail death penalty appeals. The bill is scheduled to be marked up by the Committee on Thursday, September 29. The judges said the bill could “create unreasonable obstacles to resolution” of death penalty cases, and that it could “undermine the traditional…

Craig Haney, professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has just published a new book, Death By Design: Capital Punishment as a Social Psychological System (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2005). Haney explores a number of areas that skew death penalty sentencing in America: Jury selection — By systematically screening out opponents of capital punishment, the process produces unrepresentative juries and juries that include a high concentration of people who…

Recent research has revealed a close correlation between the U.S. states that historically carried out the most lynchings and the states that today have the highest homicide rates and most death sentences. In a study led by sociologist Steven Messner of the State University of New York at Albany, county data from 10 southern states where historically reliable information on vigilante lynchings between 1882 and 1930 is available were examined (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky…

The Amicus Journal discusses death penalty issues from around the world. The latest edition contains articles on the “teamwork” approach used by capital defense attorneys in Virginia, Africa’s progress in abandoning the death penalty, and a feature on the experience of being a lawyer on the front lines of capital litigation in the U.S. The publication also examines the recent U.S. Supreme Court cases of Medellin v. Dretke and Miller-El v. Dretke. (13 Amicus Journal (2005), published in London…

According to a new study to be published in the Santa Clara Law Review, a defandant in California is more likely to be sentenced to death for killing a white person than for murdering a person of any other race, despite there being more black and Hispanic murder victims in the state. The research also shows that geography plays a key role in whether the death penalty will be sought in a particular case. The study implies that the loss of white lives is considered more important in the justice…

The latest edition of the Consular Rights in America newsletter is now available. The newsletter discusses legal and political developments concerning citizens of other countries who are in prison or on death row in the U.S. Issue 29 contains excerpts from the Texas Lawyer of recent arguments before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in the case of Jose Medellin, a Mexican citizen on death row in Texas. This case has already been the subject of arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, the…

Qin Yanhong was convicted of rape and murder in China in 1999. A panel of judges sentenced him to death. His conviction was the result of a confession that followed days of torture and interrorgation by police, despite the fact that such tactics are forbidden under Chinese law. The senior detective on the case expressed absolute confidence in the conviction and even offered to accept the punishment if it was proven wrong. In 2001, another man walked into a nearby police station and confessed to…