Publications & Testimony

“Capital Punishment 2001” — The Bureau of Justice Statistics released its annu­al report on the death penal­ty with sta­tis­tics from the pre­vi­ous year. The report con­tained a num­ber of interesting…

In ​“Don’t Kill in Our Names: Families of Murder Victims Speak Out Against the Death Penalty,” author Rachel King presents the sto­ries of 10 Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation mem­bers. Throughout the book, King exam­ines the rea­sons why these sur­vivors choose rec­on­cil­i­a­tion over ret­ri­bu­tion and why they active­ly oppose cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Using first-hand accounts and third-per­son nar­ra­tive, King presents the sto­ries in the con­text of the nation’s on-going death penal­ty debate. King is…

Symposium: Pamela Blume Leonard, Michael Mears, John H. Blume, Stephen P. Garvey, Samuel R. Gross, Richard Burr, et al.: ​“Victims and the Death Penalty: Inside and Outside the Courtroom,” 88 Cornell Law Review 257 (2003). This is a series of arti­cles in the Cornell Law Review stem­ming from a sym­po­sium focus­ing on the role that vic­tims play in cap­i­tal cas­es. The jour­nal pro­vides a close legal exam­i­na­tion of vic­tim impact state­ments and relat­ed research, expert analysis of…

For the First Time, No Death Sentences in Chicago in…

Judge John Gleeson, a promi­nent fed­er­al judge in New York, recent­ly crit­i­cized U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft for reg­u­lar­ly over­rul­ing local pros­e­cu­tors by direct­ing them to seek the death penal­ty though they have rec­om­mend­ed against it. In an arti­cle appear­ing in the November 2003 issue of the Virginia Law Review, Gleeson not­ed that the pol­i­cy ​“under­mines the inves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of vio­lent crimes.” He stat­ed, ​“For the sake of the death penal­ty in a few more federal cases,…

A decade after Georgia leg­is­la­tors estab­lished the sen­tenc­ing option of life in prison with­out parole, the num­ber of Georgia defen­dants sen­tenced to death has dropped from an annu­al aver­age of 10 to 4 or few­er each year. The decline is the result of jurors opt­ing to sen­tence defen­dants to life with­out parole and plea bar­gains in cap­i­tal cas­es. District Attorney J. Tom Morgan not­ed that life with­out parole is in effect a death sen­tence: ​“It takes a lit­tle bit longer, but it is more certain…

Jurors in Virginia sen­tenced juve­nile offend­er Lee Boyd Malvo to life in prison with­out parole after find­ing him guilty of mur­der­ing Linda Franklin, who was one of 10 vic­tims killed dur­ing a series of shoot­ings in October 2002. Malvo was 17 at the time of the crime. Attorney General John Ashcroft had cit­ed Virginia’s abil­i­ty to impose ​“the ulti­mate sanc­tion” in send­ing Malvo and his men­tor, John Muhammad, to Virginia for pros­e­cu­tion. Virginia is one of only 21 states that allow the execution…

A recent Baltimore Sun edi­to­r­i­al crit­i­cized state lead­ers for fail­ing to respond to a series of stud­ies show­ing that race plays a dis­turb­ing role in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Maryland. The paper not­ed that a study con­duct­ed by University of Maryland Professor Raymond Paternoster agreed with four oth­er reviews that all revealed sim­i­lar find­ings regard­ing race and the death penal­ty in Maryland. The paper…

Harris County District Attorney Joseph S. Owmby, who helped pros­e­cute Andrea Yates for cap­i­tal mur­der, recent­ly told a gath­er­ing of 200 Houston area men­tal health and law enforce­ment pro­fes­sion­als that had Yates received more hos­pi­tal treat­ment for her post­par­tum depres­sion, she prob­a­bly would­n’t have mur­dered her chil­dren. Owmby not­ed that Yates lost her last chance for recov­ery when she was released from a hos­pi­tal in League City while she was still dan­ger­ous­ly delu­sion­al. He said that what…