Publications & Testimony

Researchers at the University of Michigan iden­ti­fied 328 crim­i­nal cas­es, includ­ing 73 death penal­ty cas­es, over the last 15 years in which the defen­dant was ulti­mate­ly exon­er­at­ed. The study sug­gest­ed that many more inno­cent peo­ple are in prison today. Most of the cas­es stud­ied involved mur­der and rape, crimes that are sub­ject­ed to the most intense police inves­ti­ga­tion but that can also pro­vide defen­dants with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to prove their inno­cence based on…

Palm…

Tampa…

Tampa…

On Monday, April 19, the United States Supreme Court will hear argu­ments in the case of Schriro v. Summerlin that will deter­mine whether a pri­or deci­sion applies only to some death row inmates in the first stage of their appeals or to all inmates in the affect­ed states. In 2002, the Court held in Ring v. Arizona that juries, not judges, must decide who is eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. The new rul­ing could affect over 100 death row inmates in at least 5 states. At the…

District Attorney Paul Connick has agreed that Ryan Matthews, a juve­nile offend­er on Louisiana’s death row, deserves a new tri­al. Matthews has main­tained his inno­cence since his arrest. Attorneys for Matthews will use the retri­al as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to present new DNA evi­dence that they believe exon­er­ates their client. Testing of sev­en DNA pro­files gath­ered as part of key evi­dence in the case excludes Matthews as the offend­er, and sev­er­al point to the guilt of another…

San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris has announced that she will seek a life with­out parole con­vic­tion for David Hill, who is accused of mur­der­ing a city police offi­cer. Harris, who ran for office promis­ing not to seek the death penal­ty, said that in cas­es such as this it is​“nat­ur­al to feel that we should have an eye for an eye” but argued​“life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole is a severe con­se­quence.” Harris stat­ed that death penal­ty cas­es in California…

A bipar­ti­san mea­sure to elim­i­nate the juve­nile death penal­ty in Florida has passed the Senate Criminal Justice Committee and is now on its way to the full Senate for con­sid­er­a­tion. The mea­sure was intro­duced by Republican Senator Victor Crist, a death penal­ty sup­port­er who notes that young peo­ple are dif­fer­ent because they don’t have the same under­stand­ing of con­se­quences as an adult. .The bill also has sup­port from the state’s top law enforcement officers,…

Unlike offi­cials in some states who dis­missed a recent rul­ing from the International Court of Justice, U.S. President George W. Bush gave cre­dence to the deci­sion by call­ing Mexican President Vincente Fox on Tuesday to dis­cuss the rul­ing and pos­si­ble next steps regard­ing 51 Mexican for­eign nation­als on death row in the U.S. In its rul­ing, the World Court ordered the United States to review the con­vic­tions and sen­tences of 49 Mexican for­eign nation­als to determine…

Portsmouth…