Publications & Testimony

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…

Professor emer­i­tus James J. Megivern of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington exam­ines the shift in Roman Catholic Church teach­ing regard­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in ​“Judge Noonan, Church Change, and the Death Penalty,” pub­lished by the University of St. Thomas Law Journal. In the arti­cle, Megivern out­lines Judge John T. Noonan’s remarks on this issue and pro­vides addi­tion­al insight about the his­tor­i­cal mile­stones that have occurred as the Church began to issue pub­lic calls for an end…

A May 2004 poll by the polit­i­cal con­sult­ing firm of Ayres McHenry and Associates found that 66% of respon­dents sup­port cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for mur­der, a fig­ure that reflects the low­er sup­port for the death penal­ty found in sev­er­al polls tak­en in 2003. (Ayres McHenry and Associates, May 2004) In 2003, polling results pub­lished by Gallup Poll, ABC News, and the Pew Research Center all mea­sured sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment at 64%, sig­nif­i­cant­ly below the public’s sup­port for capital punishment…

As the U.S. Supreme Court pre­pares to hear argu­ments in Roper v. Simmons regard­ing the death penal­ty for juve­nile offend­ers, researchers have found crit­i­cal evi­dence that the brain con­tin­ues to change dra­mat­i­cal­ly dur­ing ado­les­cence. This research may help explain the impul­sive, often irra­tional behav­ior seen in some teenagers. ​“Kids may know the dif­fer­ence between right and wrong, but that does not stop them from doing dumb and dan­ger­ous things that they would nev­er think of doing as…

The Arizona Supreme Court has ordered that for­mer Pima County pros­e­cu­tor Kenneth Peasley be dis­barred for know­ing­ly elic­it­ing false tes­ti­mo­ny in a cap­i­tal mur­der case. After study­ing the results of a review con­duct­ed by its Disciplinary Commission, the Supreme Court not­ed that the use of false tes­ti­mo­ny in the tri­al of two men accused in a 1992 triple-mur­der case ​“could not have been more harm­ful to the jus­tice sys­tem.” In their unan­i­mous deci­sion, the Justices stat­ed, ​“A prosecutor…

A May 2004 Gallup Poll found that a grow­ing num­ber of Americans sup­port a sen­tence of life with­out parole rather than the death penal­ty for those con­vict­ed of mur­der. Gallup found that 46% of respon­dents favor life impris­on­ment over the death penal­ty, up from 44% in May 2003. During that same time frame, sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as an alter­na­tive fell from 53% to 50%. The poll also revealed a grow­ing skep­ti­cism that the death penal­ty deters crime, with 62% of those polled…

A report released in May, 2004 by The Sentencing Project, ​“The Meaning of ​‘Life’: Long Prison Sentences in Context,” doc­u­ments a dra­mat­ic increase in the num­ber of pris­on­ers serv­ing life with­out parole sen­tences and demon­strates that pris­on­ers are serv­ing increas­ing­ly longer terms of incar­cer­a­tion. Findings in the report include the…

Gordon ​“Randy” Steidl is sched­uled to be freed from an Illinois prison today (May 28^th), 17 years after he was wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to die for the 1986 mur­ders of Dyke and Karen Rhoads. He will be the nation’s 114^th death row inmate to be exon­er­at­ed and the 18^th freed in Illinois. The case against Steidl has long drawn crit­i­cism from jour­nal­ists such as Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune, and inves­ti­ga­tors famil­iar with the facts of the crime. An Illinois State Police…

“Death Penalty – Beyond Abolition” details the path to abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in Europe, the only region in the world where cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has been almost com­plete­ly erad­i­cat­ed. The book also exam­ines how this devel­op­ment has impact­ed oth­er nations around the world. With arti­cles focus­ing on issues such as work­ing with mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and find­ing appro­pri­ate alter­na­tives to the death penal­ty, the book exam­ines the pio­neer­ing role that the…