Publications & Testimony

By a margin of 46 – 42 percent, New Yorkers do not want to see the death penalty reinstated, according to a recent Siena Research Institute poll of state voters. The poll also found that a clear majority (56 percent) support the sentencing option of life without parole over capital punishment. By a margin of 46 – 42 percent, New Yorkers do not want to see the death penalty reinstated, according to a recent Siena Research Institute poll of state voters. The poll also found that a clear majority…

On February 28, 2005, Ohio Common Pleas Judge Richard Niehaus dismissed all charges against Derrick Jamison for the death of a Cincinnati bartender after prosecutors elected not to retry him in the case. (Associated Press, March 3, 2005). The prosecution had withheld critical eyewitness statements and other evidence from the defense resulting in the overturning of Jamison’s conviction in 2002. Jamison was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 based in part on the testimony of Charles Howell…

SUPREME COURT BANS EXECUTION OF JUVENILE OFFENDERS On March 1, 2005, the Court held that the Eighth Amendment forbids imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes. Below are exceprts from the opinion: “[T]he objective indicia of consensus in this case — the rejection of the juvenile death penalty in the majority of States; the infrequency of its use even where it remains on the books; and the consistency in the trend toward abolition of…

A recent article in the Wayne Law Review by Prof. Phillys L. Crocker of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law examines the Supreme Court’s struggle with the issue of death row inmates waiving their appeals. Crocker uses Rees v. Peyton, a capital case that remained on the Court’s docket from 1965 – 1995, to explore the issue. In that case, Virginia death row inmate Melvin Rees sought to withdraw his petition for a writ of certiorari so that he could be executed. In 1967, the Supreme Court stayed…

According to state and federal records obtained by The Los Angeles Times, maintaining the California death penalty system costs taxpayers more than $114 million a year beyond the cost of simply keeping the convicts locked up for life. This figure does not count the millions more spent on court costs to prosecute capital cases. The Times concluded that Californians and federal taxpayers have paid more than a quarter of a billion dollars for each of the state’s 11 executions, and that it costs…

The White House has ordered state courts to consider the complaints of 51 Mexican foreign nationals on death row in the United States. This Executive Order is an abrupt international policy shift for the Bush administration and comes just weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to consider what effect U.S. courts should give to a ruling in favor of the 51 foreign nationals by the United Nations’ highest tribunal, the International Court of Justice at the Hague. The World Court found…

Dr. Jeffrey Fagan, a professor at Columbia University Law School and a leading national expert on deterrence, testifed that recent studies claiming to show a deterrent effect to capital punishment are fraught with technical and conceptual errors. Fagan noted that a string of recent studies purporting to show that the death penalty can prevent murders use inappropriate methods of statistical analysis, fail to consider all the relevant factors that drive murder rates, and do not consider…

In his new book, Desire Street: A True Story of Death and Deliverance in New Orleans (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), the Times-Picayune city editor Jed Horne examines the exoneration of Louisiana death row inmate Curtis Kyles and how his case has impacted the New Orleans criminal justice system. The book investigates the murder of Delores Dye, a 60-year-old housewife who was gunned down in full view of six eyewitnesses. Kyles was arrested and tried twice for the crime. After an initial…

Members of New Mexico’s House of Representatives have passed a bill to abolish the death penalty, marking the first time that either chamber of the state’s legislature has passed such a measure. Representative Gail Beam, who has sponsored the abolition bill every two years since she was elected in 1996, noted that the vote was “a historic opportunity for New Mexico to take a step that’s both thoughtful and practical and to join other industrialized democracies in replacing the death penalty…

These case descriptions are taken from Professor Victor Streib’s 2005 article, “The Juvenile Death Penalty Today: Death Sentences and Executions for Juvenile Crimes, January 1, 1973 — February 28, 2005.” Alabama (13) (Last Execution of a Juvenile: November 24, 1961) Adams, Ranaldo: Black male; age 17 at crime (DOB: 7 – 1‑1980); rape, robbery, burglary, and murder; sentenced on 12-11-1998. Bonds, James Willis: Black male; age 16 at crime (DOB: 7-24-1983); robbery and murder of white male age…