Publications & Testimony

About half of Pennsylvania’s death row of 240 inmates comes from Philadelphia. Yet in the 11 years that the Defender Association of Philadelphia has been han­dling cap­i­tal cas­es, not one of their clients has been sen­tenced to death. The Defender Office han­dles one of every five cap­i­tal cas­es in the city. The dif­fer­ence between life and death appears to rest with the qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion and often comes down to dol­lar and cents. ​“What is going on in Philadelphia is really a…

According to Amnesty International’s lat­est report on exe­cu­tions around the world, China, Iran, the United States, and Vietnam account­ed for 84% of the 1,146 known exe­cu­tions car­ried out in 21 nations in 2003. China car­ried out at least 726 exe­cu­tions, Iran exe­cut­ed 108 peo­ple, the United States car­ried out 65 exe­cu­tions, and Viet Nam report­ed 64 exe­cu­tions last year. Among those exe­cut­ed in 2003 were two juve­nile offend­ers, 1 in China and 1 in the United States. The report noted that…

The Miami…

A bill estab­lish­ing the sen­tenc­ing option of life with­out parole in cap­i­tal cas­es has been sent to Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius for sig­na­ture into law. The state leg­is­la­ture passed the bipar­ti­san mea­sure in an attempt to curb costs asso­ci­at­ed with the death penal­ty. A leg­isla­tive audit released in December 2003 found that the aver­age cost of a death penal­ty case in Kansas is $1.2 mil­lion. An advi­so­ry group of judges and attor­neys who stud­ied the state’s death penal­ty law last year…

Following an International Court of Justice deci­sion that the U.S. vio­lat­ed the rights of 51 Mexican for­eign nation­als on death row and should recon­sid­er their sen­tences and con­vic­tions, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is seek­ing to deter­mine how the Court’s rul­ing will impact the 28 Mexican for­eign nation­als on California’s death row. Of the 28 men await­ing exe­cu­tion, two are exempt from the rul­ing because they had dual cit­i­zen­ship or were advised of their rights under the 1963…

Globe and Mail…

The International Court of Justice ruled in favor of Mexico and found that the United States vio­lat­ed the rights of almost all of the Mexican for­eign nation­als on death row in the U.S. The World Court, which is the high­est legal organ of the United Nations and is based in The Hague, has ordered that the Mexican cas­es be reviewed by U.S. courts. The defen­dants were not informed of their right to talk to con­sular offi­cials after being arrest­ed, as pro­vid­ed by the Vienna Convention on…

A new study con­duct­ed by the Texas Defender Service and Professor John Edens of Sam Houston State University found that state pre­dic­tions of the future dan­ger­ous­ness of cap­i­tal defen­dants were gross­ly inac­cu­rate. The review exam­ined the cas­es of 155 inmates in which pros­e­cu­tion expert wit­ness­es had pre­dict­ed the inmate would be a future dan­ger to soci­ety and in which the state asked for the death penal­ty. However, only 8 (5%) of these inmates lat­er engaged in any seri­ous­ly assaultive behavior…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit has blocked a Texas District Attorney’s final attempt to restore the death sen­tence of Victor Hugo Saldano, who was removed from Texas’s death row in 2000 because of the use of racial­ly charged tes­ti­mo­ny at his tri­al. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that for­mer Texas Attorney General John Cornyn was right to dis­miss Saldano’s death sen­tence because it was based on state tes­ti­mo­ny encour­ag­ing racial bias. During the penal­ty phase of Saldano’s 1996…