Publications & Testimony

Following a fifth round of DNA tests, a Louisiana death row inmate has been released on bond while await­ing a new tri­al. Earlier this year, Ryan Matthews’ con­vic­tion and death sen­tence were over­turned. The recent round of DNA tests on a ski mask, which pros­e­cu­tors claimed was worn by Matthews dur­ing the crime, exclud­ed Matthews but matched the genet­ic mark­ers of anoth­er inmate. To date, no phys­i­cal evi­dence link­ing Matthews to the crime has been found. Following the latest…

The U.S. Justice Department indi­cat­ed that it may no longer feel bound by extra­di­tion orders from oth­er coun­tries against the seek­ing of the death penal­ty in the U.S., a sig­nif­i­cant pol­i­cy shift that experts feel could hin­der inter­na­tion­al rela­tions. In a pre­lim­i­nary case memo by fed­er­al District Court Judge Jack Weinstein, it was not­ed that a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor had stat­ed that offi­cials in Washington believe a Dominican judge’s order to not seek the death…

Eight for­mer North Carolina Supreme Court jus­tices are urg­ing the lead­er­ship of the North Carolina House of Representatives to allow a vote on leg­is­la­tion that would impose a two-year mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the state while cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is stud­ied. Among the 8 for­mer jus­tices are Democrats and Republicans, some who sup­port the death penal­ty and oth­ers who oppose it.​“This leg­is­la­tion is about fun­da­men­tal fair­ness, an issue that should not be…

By Jace Radke <jace@​lasvegassun.​com>LAS…

The Texas Democratic Party has adopt­ed an his­toric par­ty plat­form that con­tains a num­ber of death penal­ty reform rec­om­men­da­tions, includ­ing a call for leg­is­la­tors to enact a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, to ban the exe­cu­tion of juve­nile offend­ers and the men­tal­ly ill, and to con­sid­er adopt­ing a life with­out paroles sen­tence in Texas. More than 1,700 atten­dees at the Democratic Party’s state con­ven­tion signed a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for the…

Although Virginia jurors in the tri­al of Lee Boyd Malvo main­tained their cama­raderie dur­ing the six weeks of tri­al and delib­er­a­tions on whether he was guilty of cap­i­tal mur­der in one of a series of sniper shoot­ings, the group became sharply divid­ed when weigh­ing the ques­tion of whether to sen­tence the teen to death. The jury fore­man and a sec­ond mem­ber of the jury revealed that a core group of four jurors did not believe Malvo’s role in the mur­ders war­rant­ed the death…

UPDATE: On June 28, 2004 the U.S. Supreme Court grant­ed Thomas Miller-El cer­tio­rari a sec­ond time (MILLER-EL v. DRETKE, No. 03 – 9659), in order to address whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit again erred in review­ing Miller-El’s claim that the pose­cu­tion pur­pose­ful­ly exclud­ed African Americans from his cap­i­tal jury, in vio­la­tion of Batson v. Kentucky. Arguments were heard in November 2004 and the case was decid­ed on June 13, 2005 in…

New York’s high­est court has ruled that a pro­vi­sion of the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute vio­lates the state con­sti­tu­tion, a deci­sion that appears to inval­i­date the sen­tences of all four men on New York’s death row. In New York, if a jury dead­locks, the judge impos­es a sen­tence of 20 – 25 years to life, giv­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. In its 4 – 3 rul­ing, the Court of Appeals said that these sen­tenc­ing rules might uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly coerce jurors into…

In an exclu­sive two-part series titled​“Snitch Work,” Philadelphia’s City Paper explores the pos­si­ble inno­cence of Pennsylvania death row inmate Walter Ogrod. Investigative writer Tom Lowenstein describes Ogrod’s first tri­al, which result­ed in a mis­tri­al when 11 of the 12 jurors vot­ed for acquit­tal. In Ogrod’s sec­ond tri­al in 1996, the state employed a noto­ri­ous jail­house snitch, John Hall, to strength­en their case against Ogrod, who con­tin­ued to main­tain his innocence.

In an edi­to­r­i­al writ­ten fol­low­ing the exe­cu­tion of Steven Oken in Maryland on June 17^th, The Washington Post crit­i­cized the state’s flawed death penal­ty sys­tem and ques­tioned what pur­pose cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment serves. The edi­to­r­i­al stat­ed: Steven Howard Oken went to his death this week in Maryland — the 1^st exe­cu­tion in the state in 6 years, the 1^st as well since Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) lift­ed his proces­sor’s mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. Mr. Oken was as good…