Publications & Testimony

Speaking at the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Awards Dinner in Illinois, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said that the death penalty has “serious flaws.” He recalled the late Justice Marshall in remarking how much the country has learned about the risks in death cases: “Since his retirement, with the benefit of DNA evidence, we have learned that a substantial number of death sentences have been imposed erroneously,” Stevens said during the ceremony. He added that Supreme…

In a case that sharply illustrates the fallibility of eyewitness testimony, Miami-Dade prosecutors plan to ask a state judge to vacate the convictions of Luis Diaz based on DNA evidence that was not available during his 1980 trial. Though he was shorter and lighter than the man that most witnesses described to police, Diaz was charged with rape 25 years ago after eight women identified him as their attacker. Following his trial, the judge said, “I’ve never seen a case where I was more convinced…

In testimony before the Massachusetts Joint Committee on the Judiciary regarding proposed legislation to initiate a “foolproof” death penalty, Columbia Law School Professor Jeffrey Fagan (pictured) analyzed recent studies that claimed that capital punishment deters murders. He stated that the studies “fall apart under close scrutiny.” Fagan noted that the studies are fraught with technical and conceptual errors, including inappropriate methods of statistical analysis, failures to consider all…

Thomas Doswell of Pennsylvania and Larry Peterson of New Jersey recently had their convictions overturned as a direct result of DNA testing. Each defendant had serverd 18 years in prison. In Peterson’s case, the prosecution had sought the death penalty but the jury could not agree and he was sentenced to life. His case marked the first time a New Jersey court has overturned a conviction because of DNA evidence. Both reversals stemmed from the work of attorneys at the Innocence Project of the…

A recent Alabama opinion poll found that less than half of those surveyed believe Alabama’s death penalty is applied fairly and 57% of respondents support a temporary halt to executions in the state until questions about fairness and reliability are studied. In other findings, 96% of those surveyed support the use of DNA in cases where it might prove guilt or innocence and 62% said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supported suspension of the death penalty until questions…

Decided: June 27, 2005 By a vote of 5 – 4, the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit was wrong to reverse itself, in spite of the fact that the Sixth Circuit announced that its initial denial of Thompson’s appeal was mistaken. Last year a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit issued a split decision denying Thompson’s Sixth Amendment ineffective assistance of counsel claim in a 2 – 1 vote and three separate opinions. The same three judges later unanimously…

The dedication of the National Death Penalty Archive at the State University of New York at Albany will take place on August 9, 2005. Hugo Bedau of Tufts University will keynote the program, which will also feature William J. Bowers, Scott Christianson, David Kaczynski, and Michael Radelet. The Archive is a partnership between the Capital Punishment Research Initiative at the School of Criminal Justice and the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives at the University of…

The following article by Henry Weinstein appeared in the Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2005: (DPIC Note: The Senate Judiciary Committee put off markup of the Streamlined Procedures Act, probably until September. Also, see Letter from former Attorneys General and prosecutors opposing this legislation.) THE NATION Bid to Speed Death Penalty Appeals Under Fire Conservatives and former prosecutors are among foes of a bill, before a Senate panel today, to curtail ‘endless’ delays in cases. By Henry…

In a recent Washington Post column, Richard Cohen compared the deep objections voiced by many Americans after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that communities can condemn property in distressed areas to make way for economic development to the tepid reaction to strong evidence that a Missouri man may have been wrongly executed for a crime he did not commit. Cohen, noting that it seems “far easier for the government to wrongfully take a life than a parcel of run-down real estate,” wrote: The city…