Publications & Testimony

The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa,…

Miami…

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, for­mer Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev, med­ical experts, and 48 nations are among those who filed friend-of-the-court briefs on Monday (July 19) urg­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to end the juve­nile death penal­ty. The Court is sched­uled to hear argu­ments this fall in Roper v. Simmons, a case that will deter­mine the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of exe­cut­ing juve­nile offend­ers. The U.S. is one of only a hand­ful of nations around the world that…

The New York League of Women Voters has urged state law­mak­ers not to attempt a ​“quick fix” solu­tion to the state’s flawed death penal­ty law. ​“We now have a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-exam­ine the use of the death penal­ty in New York,” said Marcia Merrins, pres­i­dent of the League of Women Voters. In June 2004, the New York Court of Appeals declared the state’s death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The League of Women’s Voter’s, which plans to host a series of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment forums throughout…

The award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary ​“Deadline,” which takes view­ers direct­ly into the emo­tion­al and legal storm sur­round­ing for­mer Illinois Governor George Ryan’s extra­or­di­nary deci­sion to com­mute the death sen­tences of all those on death row, will air on NBC dur­ing a spe­cial 2‑hour ​“Dateline” pro­gram at 8 p.m. on July 30^th. The Big Mouth Productions doc­u­men­tary has gained wide­spread crit­i­cal acclaim and it was fea­tured at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. During film­ing, the program’s…

A study con­duct­ed by the U.S. Navy and Yale University found that eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny is often large­ly inac­cu­rate, even when vic­tims get a long look at vio­lent crim­i­nals, and police and juries may be giv­ing this evi­dence too much cred­i­bil­i­ty. After a unique study of 509 Navy and Marine offi­cers under­go­ing high-lev­el and low-lev­el stress dur­ing elite hostage sur­vival train­ing at Fort Bragg, N.C., researchers dis­cov­ered that few of the par­tic­i­pat­ing top offi­cers could accurately…

European Union for­eign min­is­ters have urged Iraq’s inter­im gov­ern­ment not to rein­state cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as it con­tin­ues to devel­op the nation’s jus­tice sys­tem. ​“The European Union recon­firms its oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty in all cas­es,” the min­is­ters said in a draft state­ment to Iraq Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari. ​“The mes­sage has been very clear … We have this pol­i­cy, and we will main­tain this pol­i­cy,” said Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot at a news conference…

The Death Penalty Information Center has new Web resources to assist edu­ca­tors and those fol­low­ing recent court devel­op­ments relat­ed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: 1) DPIC’s revised Educational Curriculum on the Death Penalty is an excel­lent tool for TEACHERS plan­ning to involve their stu­dents in the upcom­ing nation­al focus on juve­niles and the death penal­ty. See also DPIC’s Web page on Roper v. Simmons and an overview of the Juvenile Death Penalty. 2) The Supreme Court recent­ly added three…

In an edi­to­r­i­al enti­tled ​“Too Many Questions” that fol­lowed a two-part news series exam­in­ing new infor­ma­tion that casts doubt on the guilt of Ohio death row inmate John Spirko, the Mansfield News Journal of Ohio called for a re-exam­i­na­tion of Spirko’s case before the state allows an exe­cu­tion to go for­ward. A fed­er­al judge in the same case has said he has con­sid­er­able doubts about the law­ful­ness of the case against Spirko. The edi­to­r­i­al not­ed: It’s not often we call for careful…