Publications & Testimony

Battleboro (Vermont) ReformerOctober 13, 2004Too young to…

Battleboro (Vermont)…

Following a call from the Houston Police Chief and from state leg­is­la­tors to halt exe­cu­tions in cas­es from Harris County, four of the state’s largest news­pa­pers pub­lished edi­to­ri­als in sup­port of a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. The Houston police crime lab has been plagued with errors in DNA test­ing and preser­va­tion of evi­dence. There have been far more exe­cu­tions from Harris County (Houston) than from any oth­er coun­ty in the coun­try. AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN (N)othing can jus­ti­fy an execution…

In ​“Waiting to Die: Life on Death Row,” Richard M. Rossi pro­vides a first-hand account of his dai­ly life on Arizona’s death row. Rossi was sen­tenced to death in 1983 and has tak­en respon­si­bil­i­ty for the mur­der he com­mit­ted. He was orig­i­nal­ly offered a plea bar­gain with a life sen­tence, but he decid­ed to go to tri­al. He has been on death row for 20 years. In his book, Rossi details how pris­on­ers sur­vive on death row, the con­di­tions under which they live, and the psy­cho­log­i­cal toll that…

The Republican (Springfield,…

On October 9, the U.S. Senate passed by voice vote a bill called the ​“Justice for All Act of 2004” that con­tains impor­tant ele­ments of the Innocence Protection Act, orig­i­nal­ly intro­duced in 2000. A sim­i­lar bill recent­ly over­whelm­ing­ly passed the House of Representatives (HR 5107), and it is expect­ed that the final leg­is­la­tion will now be signed into law. The bill pro­vides for expand­ed access to DNA test­ing for prison inmates and assis­tance to states for both defense and prosecution in…

A deeply divid­ed U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled 8 – 7 that the exe­cu­tion of Tennessee death row inmate Paul Gregory House may move for­ward despite the fact that near­ly half of the judges believe he is not guilty and should be freed imme­di­ate­ly. ​“We are faced with a real-life mur­der mys­tery, an authen­tic ​‘who-done-it’ where the wrong man may be exe­cut­ed,” wrote dis­sent­ing judge Ronald Lee Gilman. A N.Y. Times arti­cle not­ed that although courts are often close­ly divided on…

A recent­ly pub­lished study by Northeastern crim­i­nal jus­tice pro­fes­sors William J. Bowers and Michael E. Antonio, in con­junc­tion with University of Delaware pro­fes­sors Valerie P. Hans and Benjamin D. Fleury-Steiner, finds jurors very reluc­tant to give the death penal­ty to juve­nile defen­dants because of their imma­tu­ri­ty and dys­func­tion­al fam­i­ly back­grounds. “ In inter­view­ing almost 1,200 jurors, we’ve found that jurors across the nation would near­ly always sen­tence a juve­nile to life,” said…

The…