Publications & Testimony

By Claudia Wallis; Kristina Dell, with report­ing by Alice Park/​New…

The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board has vot­ed to rec­om­mend clemen­cy for death row inmate Osbaldo Torres, a Mexican for­eign nation­al who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on May 18. The Board made its deci­sion after an hour-long hear­ing that includ­ed tes­ti­mo­ny from Carlos de Icaza, Mexican Ambassador to the United States. Icaza told the board that Mexico oppos­es cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in all cas­es, and that this case was par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­ble­some because no proof was pre­sent­ed that Torres…

“America’s Death Penalty: Beyond Repair?” exam­ines cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S. since 1976 through a vari­ety of schol­ar­ly essays that look at crit­i­cal issues such as inno­cence, race, arbi­trari­ness, and inter­na­tion­al human rights law. Reknown death penal­ty expert and law pro­fes­sor Tony Amsterdam notes, ​“In these essays, some of our most knowl­edge­able stu­dents of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment take a hard, no-non­sense look at how it actu­al­ly oper­ates and what drives…

As Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney seeks to rein­state cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment with a ​“fool­proof” system(see ear­li­er What’s New item), a news inves­ti­ga­tion has revealed that 22 state men have served lengthy prison terms over the last two decades for rapes and mur­ders that they did not com­mit. Most of the wrong­ly con­vict­ed inmates were black. Experts say that Boston’s Suffolk County pros­e­cu­tors have wrong­ly con­vict­ed the sec­ond high­est num­ber of inno­cent peo­ple in the nation, falling closely…

After a review of North Carolina’s death penal­ty, the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers has issued a series of 11 rec­om­men­da­tions that aim to address issues of fair­ness and accu­ra­cy in the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statutes. In addi­tion to rec­om­men­da­tions address­ing hid­den evi­dence, mis­tak­en eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tions, dis­crim­i­na­tion, and unre­li­able con­fes­sions, the group urged North Carolina law­mak­ers to enact a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions while they con­sid­er implementing reforms…

Questions about the accu­ra­cy and fair­ness of Alabama’s death penal­ty con­tin­ue to sur­face as illus­trat­ed by a series of recent fed­er­al court rul­ings grant­i­ng two new tri­als and one new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing. All of the rul­ings were based on inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion pro­vid­ed to the defen­dants. ​“Counsel sim­ply pro­vid­ed no defense to the death penal­ty,” Chief U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon of Birmingham wrote March 31 in giv­ing one of the inmates a new tri­al. The man has been on death row 22…

District attor­neys from sev­er­al Massachusetts coun­ties, includ­ing Suffolk, Norfolk, Middlesex, Essex and Barnstable, had strong reser­va­tions about Governor Mitt Romney’s attempt to estab­lish a near­ly ​“fool­proof” death penal­ty sys­tem in the state. Some not­ed that noth­ing can elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of human error in such cas­es. The dis­trict attor­neys said that the state’s med­ical examiner’s office and crime labs are cur­rent­ly over­whelmed with work, and that the labs do not have the capacity…

Three sched­uled exe­cu­tions in May – Osvaldo Torres in Oklahoma, Kelsey Patterson in Texas, and Sammy Perkins in North Carolina – raise trou­bling ques­tions about the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty. Torres is a Mexican for­eign nation­al whose exe­cu­tion is sched­uled for May 18, just weeks after the International Court of Justice ruled that the United States should review the cas­es of 51 Mexican for­eign nation­als on death row in the U.S., includ­ing Torres’s case. At issue is whether the…

A District Court pan­el in Florida has endorsed a spe­cial ver­dict form that asks jurors to spec­i­fy what ele­ments of a crime war­rant a death penal­ty. The District Court cer­ti­fied its deci­sion as a mat­ter of great pub­lic impor­tance and asked the Florida Supreme Court to review the rul­ings, not­ing ​“this rul­ing could affect many cas­es that may ulti­mate­ly be reviewed by the Supreme Court.” In the orig­i­nal rul­ing in the cap­i­tal case against Alfredie Steele Jr., Pasco County Judge Lynn Tepper…

Exhibit A in how emo­tion can cloud rea­son is the polit­i­cal yam­mer­ing over an International Court of Justice rul­ing that the United States had vio­lat­ed a treaty guar­an­tee­ing for­eign crim­i­nal defen­dants the right to con­sult with their…