Publications & Testimony

The 2^nd World Congress Against the Death Penalty will take place in Montreal, Canada, October 6 – 9, 2004. The con­fer­ence is spon­sored by Penal Reform International, the End to Capital Punishment Movement (ECPM USA), and the ECPM Network (Together Against the Death Penalty). During the four-day event, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from death penal­ty and law-relat­ed orga­ni­za­tions, and vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers from around the world will host a series of work­shops, plenary sessions,…

A recent study con­duct­ed by for­mer U.S. Attorney Thomas Sullivan and released by the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law con­clud­ed that elec­tron­ic record­ing of inter­ro­ga­tions of crim­i­nal sus­pects is a cost-effec­tive method that results in more con­vic­tions and speed­i­er jus­tice. The researchers con­tact­ed 238 law enforce­ment agen­cies in 38 states that record inter­ro­ga­tions in felony crimes and found that ​“vir­tu­al­ly every offi­cer with whom we…

The Angolite, a news mag­a­zine pro­duced by inmates at Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary, high­lights the com­mu­ta­tion of Herbert Welcome, a man with men­tal retar­da­tion whose death sen­tence was lift­ed by Governor Mike Foster in 2003. The arti­cle fol­lows Welcome’s decades-long strug­gle to have his sen­tence com­mut­ed, includ­ing a 1988 rec­om­men­da­tion for clemen­cy that was nev­er signed. Years lat­er, Welcome’s clemen­cy effort was reignit­ed by his attor­neys from the Center for Equal Justice…

Texas plans to exe­cute David Harris on June 30^th on the basis of a pre­dic­tion in 1986 that he would be a future dan­ger even if sen­tenced to life in prison. Dr. Edward Gripon tes­ti­fied that Harris posed a sub­stan­tial risk of com­mit­ting fur­ther vio­lent acts, even though Gripon had nev­er met or exam­ined Harris. During his near­ly two decades on death row, Harris has had only minor infrac­tions, such as hav­ing too many postage stamps or hang­ing a clothes­line in his…

After delib­er­at­ing for 20 hours over three days, the jurors who recent­ly found Terry Nichols (pic­tured) guilty of mur­der in the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb­ing expressed some of the anguish that choos­ing between life and death caused them. ​“It was tough. We had found it much eas­i­er to arrive at a guilty ver­dict, but the penal­ty phase was much hard­er,” said juror Terry Zellmer. Cecil Reeder, a Korean War vet­er­an who sup­port­ed the death penal­ty for Nichols, said, ​“This shook me as deep as…

As Maryland pre­pares for the exe­cu­tion of Steven Oken this week, two Maryland par­ents whose daugh­ter was mur­dered six years ago pro­vid­ed a vic­tims’ fam­i­ly per­spec­tive on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in The Washington Post: ​“Oken com­mit­ted the crimes for which he is sen­tenced to die back in 1987. Anyone who has seen the sur­vivors of vic­tims feels sor­row for the pain they have had to bear as the case has worn on. But the death penal­ty holds lit­tle promise of help­ing sur­vivors deal with their emotional…

A Kentucky pros­e­cu­tor raised reli­gious objec­tions to the death penal­ty in ask­ing to step aside in the case of two men charged with mur­der. J. Stewart Schneider, the com­mon­wealth’s attor­ney in Boyd County in north­east­ern Kentucky, said Thursday he filed his motion to with­draw from the case after reflec­tions at a reli­gious retreat. Schneider also is a min­is­ter with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). ​“I spent that week­end in prayer,” he said. ​“The more I thought about it, the more…

Three new items have been added to DPIC’s Web site, includ­ing a sum­ma­ry of a new report from The Sentencing Project, the com­plete results of a recent North Carolina poll, and an updat­ed ​“Special Resources from DPIC” Web page: 1. A sum­ma­ry of impor­tant facts from The Sentencing Project’s new report: ​“The Meaning of ​‘Life’: Long Prison Sentences in Context.” For exam­ple, the report notes that the use of life-with­out-parole sen­tences has expand­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly – of the lif­ers in prison, one in…

In a unan­i­mous vote that will soon add their nation to a lengthy list of coun­tries around the world that have either halt­ed exe­cu­tions or aban­doned cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment alto­geth­er, the low­er house of Tajikistan’s Parliament has adopt­ed a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty. Passage by the upper house and the sig­na­ture of the President are report­ed­ly assured. The Tajik mora­to­ri­um will leave Uzbekistan as the only repub­lic in Central Asia that con­tin­ues to car­ry out exe­cu­tions. Experts…