Publications & Testimony

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…

After less than five hours of delib­er­a­tion, jurors in a fed­er­al death penal­ty case in Maryland returned life sen­tences for two men con­vict­ed ear­li­er of fed­er­al drug con­spir­a­cy charges and firearms vio­la­tions. The fed­er­al case against Michael Taylor and Keon Moses was the first time since 1998 that U.S. pros­e­cu­tors in Baltimore had sought a death sen­tence. The life sen­tences for Taylor and Keon con­tin­ue a nation­al trend iden­ti­fied last year by the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel…

Daytona Beach…

North Carolina may become the first state to enact a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions through the leg­isla­tive process. A mora­to­ri­um mea­sure has already passed their Senate and is await­ing action in the House. A new Web site launched by the North Carolina Coalition for a Moratorium, www​.ncmora​to​ri​um​.org, con­tains a vast amount of infor­ma­tion relat­ed to this impor­tant issue. Among the top­ics exam­ined are the qual­i­ty of coun­sel, inno­cence, costs, access to DNA test­ing, deter­rence, race,…

St. Petersburg…

Just weeks after leg­is­la­tors in Wyoming and South Dakota passed leg­is­la­tion to ban the exe­cu­tion of juve­nile offend­ers, law­mak­ers in Florida are on a sim­i­lar course that may send a bill that elim­i­nates the death penal­ty for those under the age of 18 to Governor Jeb Bush for sig­na­ture into law. Members of the Florida Senate passed the juve­nile death penal­ty ban by a vote of 26 – 12, and the House is expect­ed to take up the mea­sure lat­er this week. Florida House Speaker Johnnie…

More than two decades after Max Soffar was sen­tenced to die for a Houston-area triple mur­der, an appel­late court has ruled that his court-appoint­ed attor­ney inad­e­quate­ly rep­re­sent­ed him dur­ing his 1980 tri­al and that he deserves to be retried with­in 120 days or freed from Texas’s death row. Although no evi­dence link­ing Soffar to the crime was ever found and his accounts of the mur­ders, con­tained in what are believed to be false con­fes­sions, var­ied vast­ly from sev­er­al eye­wit­ness­es, Soffar’s…

National Law…

St. Petersburg…