Publications & Testimony

Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America’s Death Row, by Professor David Dow, to be released in April 2005, is a behind-the-scenes look at the death penalty through the lens of an attorney who formerly supported capital punishment. Dow, who teaches at the University of Houston Law Center and founded the Texas Innocence Network, provides case histories illustrating serious flaws in the death penalty system. He uses these cases to guide readers through a web of coerced confessions…

In an examination of the case against three men sentenced to death for a triple murder that occurred in Tucson’s El Grande Market, reporter Jeffrey Toobin in the New Yorker describes the incidents that led to the fall of the lead prosecutor, Kenneth Peasley, for presenting false evidence in the case. Only one of the co-defendants, Martin Soto-Fong, remains on Arizona’s death row. Of the other two defendants, Christopher McCrimmon was acquitted at a re-trial in 1997, and Andre Minnett had his…

With just days remaining in his term, Indiana Governor Joe Kernan (pictured) has granted clemency to Michael Daniels, whose case underscored the Governor’s concerns about the death penalty. “I have now encountered two cases where doubt about an offender’s personal responsibility and the quality of the legal process leading to the capital sentence has led me to grant clemency. These instances should cause us to take a hard look at how Indiana administers and reviews capital sentences,” said…

As Connecticut prepares to carry out its first execution in over 40 years, Catholic Archbishop Henry J. Mansell of Hartford called on local parishes to sign a Church petition that calls for an end to capital punishment. “The death penalty offers the tragic illusion that we can defend life only by taking life,” Mansell wrote in a letter that will be read during Masses on January 8 and 9. Other bishops in Connecticut are taking similar actions prior to the scheduled execution of Michael Ross on…

The Washington Post has conducted further research into the clemency memos prepared by U.S. Attorney General nominee Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as lead counsel to then-Governor George W. Bush in Texas. Gonzales crafted 62 memos regarding clemency requests from Texas death row inmates, and several Texas attorneys have voiced their criticisms that the clemency memos contained incomplete and unfair summaries of evidence and mitigating circumstances. The memos, first reviewed in 2003 by…

The book In Sweet Company: Conversations With Extraordinary Women About Living a Spiritual Life by Margaret Wolff features Sister Helen Prejean as one of 14 women whose spiritual beliefs have served as the compass for their decision-making and life’s work. Prejean, author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated book “Dead Man Walking” and the newly released “The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions,” has been an advisor to those on death row and an advocate against the death…

In her new book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, Sister Helen Prejean uses her personal experiences as a counselor to those on death row to explore the issue of innocence and the likelihood of executing a wrongly convicted person. The book also traces the historical and legal underpinnings of the death penalty in the U.S. Prejean, who authored the #1 New York Times bestseller “Dead Man Walking,” begins her new book by focusing on the cases of Joseph Roger…

Juveniles and the Mentally Disabled More Likely to Give False Confessions Studies and surveys have found that both minors and the mentally impaired are more likely to make false confessions, in part because they are more vulnerable to suggestion. A recent study conducted by Northwestern University law professor Steve Drizin and UC Irvine criminologist Richard Leo examined 125 cases in which individuals were exonerated after giving false confessions. The researchers found that 32% of the cases…

Autopsies of Executed Inmates by State Medical Examiners Reveal Probability of Botched Procedures An autopsy of the last man executed in Kentucky, Edward L. Harper, found only 3 to 6.5 milligrams per liter of barbiturate in Harper’s blood — a level leaving a high chance that Harper was conscious throughout the execution and that he felt pain when he was injected with subsequent drugs that paralyzed and suffocated him, and then stopped his heart. Dr. Mark Dershwitz, the prosecution expert who…