Publications & Testimony

Victims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania who may have lost a loved one because of the actions of Charles Cullen, a nurse charged with mul­ti­ple killings, have voiced sup­port for spar­ing Cullen the death penal­ty in exchange for his agree­ing to pro­vide infor­ma­tion on vic­tims. New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey and sev­en pros­e­cu­tors in New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania con­sult­ed with the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies in decid­ing whether to seek the death penal­ty. ​“It means more for me…

According to a 2003 inter­nal audit of the Texas Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) crime labs, pro­ce­dur­al flaws, secu­ri­ty laps­es and shod­dy doc­u­men­ta­tion prob­lems con­tin­ue to under­mine the qual­i­ty of DNA lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing results through­out the state. These same prob­lems pre­vi­ous­ly shut down crim­i­nal lab­o­ra­to­ries in Houston and McAllen, and the new find­ings could throw thou­sands of crim­i­nal cas­es into doubt. According to pub­lic records obtained by the Houston Chronicle, an audit of labs in…

St. Petersburg…

The Illinois Attorney General’s office will not appeal a fed­er­al judge’s rul­ing find­ing that it was ​“rea­son­ably prob­a­ble” that Gordon Steidl would have been acquit­ted had the jury heard all of the evi­dence in his cap­i­tal mur­der case. The court grant­ed Steidl a new tri­al to prove his long-pro­claimed inno­cence. Steidl was giv­en the death penal­ty for the 1986 mur­ders of a new­ly­wed cou­ple, but his sen­tence was reduced to life in prison with­out parole in 1999 fol­low­ing an Illinois State…

On March 31, 2004, the International Court of Justice will issue a rul­ing in a case brought by Mexico against the United States involv­ing 52 Mexicans on death row in var­i­ous U.S. states. The Court is the high­est legal organ of the United Nations and is based in The Hague. Mexico has argued that the defen­dants are enti­tled to retri­als because they were not informed of their right to talk to con­sular offi­cials after being arrest­ed, as pro­vid­ed by the Vienna Convention on Consular…

Following two hours of tes­ti­mo­ny includ­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of crime vic­tims and death row exonerees, the Minnesota Senate Crime Prevention and Public Safety Committee vot­ed 8 – 2 against rein­stat­ing the death penal­ty, con­tin­u­ing near­ly a cen­tu­ry with­out the sen­tence on the state’s books. The Committee’s vote like­ly blocks pas­sage of the death penal­ty bill this year. Don Streufert, whose daugh­ter was raped and mur­dered in 1991, was among those who tes­ti­fied against the bill. He not­ed, ​“No…

On May 18^th, Texas plans to exe­cute Kelsey Patterson, a men­tal­ly ill man who was first diag­nosed with para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia more than a decade before he mur­dered two women in 1992. After the mur­der, Patterson wan­dered around dressed only in his socks. Although a jury found Patterson com­pe­tent to stand tri­al, he repeat­ed­ly inter­rupt­ed the pro­ceed­ings to offer a ram­bling nar­ra­tive about implant­ed devices and oth­er aspects of a con­spir­a­cy against him. According to a new report from Amnesty…

In the lat­est edi­tion of the jour­nal Deviant Behavior, soci­ol­o­gist Robert Young of the University of Texas has report­ed that death penal­ty sup­port­ers, such as those who are qual­i­fied to sit on juries in cap­i­tal cas­es, were about a third more like­ly to have prej­u­diced views of blacks. Young’s eval­u­a­tion of polling data also revealed that death penal­ty sup­port­ers are more like­ly to con­vict the defen­dant. When polled, they were near­ly twice as like­ly to say it was worse to let the guilty go free…

In a vote uphold­ing the state’s long­stand­ing abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, Michigan law­mak­ers refused to sup­port a mea­sure that would have put cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment before state vot­ers in a ref­er­en­dum. The vote fell 18 short of the 2/​3 required for pas­sage. During a lengthy House debate regard­ing the bill, Representative Jack Minor (D‑Flint) told his col­leagues that stud­ies show crime rates are low­er in states with­out the death penal­ty. He not­ed, ​“The death penalty’s not a deter­rent. In fact,…

According to recent Gallup polls, 64% of Americans favor the death penal­ty, while 48% of Canadian and 55% of British cit­i­zens favor the pun­ish­ment. Great Britain and Canada have abol­ished the death penal­ty. The polling research also exam­ined whether cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has a deter­rent effect on crime. Polling has revealed that most Americans do not believe the death penal­ty acts as a deter­rent to com­mit­ting mur­der. Gallup’s report com­pared homi­cide sta­tis­tics in the United States, Britain, and…