Publications & Testimony

Two Congressmen have intro­duced a non-bind­ing res­o­lu­tion, backed by the threat of impeach­ment, that would express the sense of Congress that U.S. judges should not con­sid­er for­eign laws or court deci­sions in their rul­ings. The mea­sure, authored by Republican Representatives Tom Feeney of Florida and Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, was trig­gered by recent court deci­sions, includ­ing death penal­ty cas­es, in which jus­tices made ref­er­ence to laws or opin­ions in other countries.

An Army Court of Criminal Appeals has vacat­ed the death sen­tence of William Kreutzer, a Fort Bragg sol­dier who was sent to the military’s death row for killing a fel­low sol­dier and wound­ing oth­ers in 1995. The Court cit­ed a num­ber of grounds for the rul­ing that opens the door for rehear­ings on some charges and the sen­tence. For exam­ple, Kreutzer’s attor­neys failed to ade­quate­ly explain the sig­nif­i­cance of their client’s men­tal health prob­lems for the panel that…

According to District Attorney Tom Keith, death sen­tences in North Carolina have dra­mat­i­cal­ly declined because jurors are increas­ing­ly skep­ti­cal of the jus­tice sys­tem. Last year, 6 peo­ple were sent to North Carolina’s death row, far less than the 26 who were giv­en death sen­tences in 1999. Keith, who is mov­ing resources away from death penal­ty cas­es and to aggres­sive­ly tar­get­ing gun crim­i­nals before they kill, believes that a num­ber of high-profile wrongful…

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) has released its lat­est Death Row USA report. Data from this and pre­vi­ous reports for 2003 show that there were 143 new death sen­tences in the United States in 2003, the fewest num­ber since 1977 and about 50% few­er than the annu­al new sen­tences in the late 1990s, which aver­aged about 300 per year. According to LDF, 3,503 peo­ple were on death row in the United States as of January 1, 2004, a decrease from the 3,697 reported on…

Mexican President Vicente Fox has urged the United States to halt the exe­cu­tion of Osvaldo Torres, a Mexican for­eign nation­al who is sched­uled to die in Oklahoma on May 18^th. Oklahoma set the exe­cu­tion date despite a 2003 rul­ing by the International Court of Justice, based in The Hague, that called for stay­ing Torres’s exe­cu­tion and the exe­cu­tion of two oth­er for­eign nation­als in Texas until the Court could fur­ther review the case. The alle­ga­tion before the world court is…

Florida Senator Victor Crist (R‑Tampa), a long-time death penal­ty sup­port­er, is ask­ing his leg­isla­tive col­leagues to sup­port a bill to bar the juve­nile death penal­ty in Florida.​“In my heart and soul I believe it’s the right thing to do. There is a cer­tain essence of juve­niles that make them dif­fer­ent,” said Crist. Research sup­ports that notion. David Fassler, a Vermont psy­chi­a­trist who helped the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry draft its policy…

Steven Manning, a for­mer Chicago police offi­cer who was exon­er­at­ed from Illinois’ death row in 2000 but remained in a Missouri prison on anoth­er charge, has been freed after Missouri pros­e­cu­tors dropped all charges against him. In January 2000, 7 years after he was sen­tenced to death in Illinois, a judge threw out Manning’s death sen­tence and con­vic­tion because the state used inad­mis­si­ble tes­ti­mo­ny to secure his con­vic­tion. Cook County prosecutors later…

The (Louisville, KY)…

In its review of death penal­ty expens­es, the State of Kansas con­clud­ed that cap­i­tal cas­es are 70% more expen­sive than com­pa­ra­ble non-death penal­ty cas­es. The study count­ed death penal­ty case costs through to exe­cu­tion and found that the medi­an death penal­ty case costs $1.26 mil­lion. Non-death penal­ty cas­es were count­ed through to the end of incar­cer­a­tion and were found to have a medi­an cost of $740,000. For death penal­ty cas­es, the pre-tri­al and trial…

West Hartford Police Chief James Strillacci, pres­i­dent of the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association, has told state law­mak­ers that resources devot­ed to the death penal­ty would be bet­ter spent else­where. He noted, ​“It is a prac­ti­cal issue. We have a death penal­ty law on the books, but we haven’t exe­cut­ed any­one since 1960, and it does­n’t look like any­one will be exe­cut­ed. The process is long, labor inten­sive and expen­sive. Now, any mon­ey we’ve put into death…