Publications & Testimony

Washington…

In his book ​“Still Surviving,” Nanon Williams (pic­tured right), who was 17 at the time of the crime that placed him on death row, pro­vides a first hand account of liv­ing under a sen­tence of death in Texas. The book details Williams’s jour­ney from teenage boy to adult­hood while liv­ing in the shad­ow of the nation’s busiest exe­cu­tion cham­ber. His text intro­duces read­ers to the expe­ri­ences of soli­tary con­fine­ment and hav­ing friends exe­cut­ed, as well as to main­tain­ing rela­tion­ships with those on…

Just hours after a judge ordered that a death sen­tence hand­ed down in fed­er­al court in Massachusetts be car­ried out in New Hampshire, the N.H. House Democratic Leader, Peter Burling, said the state should renew its con­sid­er­a­tion of leg­is­la­tion to repeal the death penal­ty. ​“I think the issue is so pro­found­ly divi­sive and so com­plete­ly found­ed on peo­ple’s core val­ues that there be some response,” said Burling. ​“I think most of us believed we’d nev­er see an exe­cu­tion in New Hampshire. It’s easy…

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has pro­posed a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to rein­state the death penal­ty after near­ly a cen­tu­ry with­out it. The idea has been met with some firm resis­tance from state law­mak­ers, includ­ing crit­i­cism from Representative Keith Ellison, who not­ed, ​“The death penal­ty serves no legit­i­mate pur­pose. It’s applied unfair­ly, falling dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly on the poor, peo­ple of col­or and, in too many cas­es, on the inno­cent. It’s also a bud­get buster, sap­ping resources from…

In 2003, California juries sent 16 indi­vid­u­als to death row, the low­est num­ber since 1985 and a dra­mat­ic decline from 1999’s total of 42 new death sen­tences. Some believe the decline is evi­dence of pros­e­cu­tors being more selec­tive in seek­ing death con­vic­tions, as well as the pub­lic’s skep­ti­cism about the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. Robert Pugsley, a pro­fes­sor at Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles, not­ed, ​“I think that (inci­dences of wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed death row inmates) has…

The Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty has issued a new report, ​“Questioning a Broken System: Capital Punishment in Illinois in 2003,” an in-depth review of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Illinois fol­low­ing actions by the for­mer gov­er­nor and the leg­is­la­ture to address sys­temic flaws in the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem. The report notes that pros­e­cu­tors con­tin­ue to aggres­sive­ly seek the death penal­ty, but pub­lic skep­ti­cism is grow­ing over the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. For exam­ple, 80%…

Greensboro (NC) News and…

Detroit Free…

Arizona Daily…

Arnold Holloway, a Pennsylvania death row inmate who was con­vict­ed 18 years ago, was grant­ed a new tri­al after a fed­er­al appeals court found that pros­e­cu­tors improp­er­ly exclud­ed blacks from the jury. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said that an assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney in Holloway’s case used 11 of his 12 peremp­to­ry strikes dur­ing jury selec­tion to elim­i­nate blacks. ​“The pat­tern here was cer­tain­ly strong enough to sug­gest an inten­tion of keep­ing blacks off the jury,” said…