Publications & Testimony

A recent San Jose Mercury News editorial recommended including the death penalty in the California Performance Review prepared for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to reduce public spending. The paper stated that the abandonment of capital punishment would save valuable taxpayer dollars in the state and praised local efforts to support a temporary halt to executions while capital punishment is reviewed. The editorial noted: Termination of the death penalty would add immeasurably to the $32…

The Pantagraph (IL) August 9, 2004 Editorial Changing U.S. attitudes toward the death penalty are reflected in a case under consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices have the opportunity to decide whether it is unconstitutional to execute people who were under age 18 when they committed their crimes. Actually, the court ruled on that issue 15 years ago in Sanford v. Kentucky, when it allowed the practice for 16- and 17-year-olds. A year earlier, it had ruled against execution of…

A federal judge has thrown out Ernest Ray Willis’ capital conviction after finding “strong reason to be concerned that Willis may be actually innocent” and that West Texas authorities needlessly drugged him and concealed evidence at his trial. The decision casts doubt on Willis’ 1987 conviction for the arson-murder of two women in Pecos County, a crime that another death row inmate, David Long, later confessed he had committed. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Royal Furgeson said that…

North Carolina Governor Mike Easley signed a bill into law that requires prosecutors to share their files in all felony cases. The bill was approved in the wake of allegations that prosecutors withheld evidence in the capital murder trial of Alan Gell, who was later exonerated and freed from death row. The new open discovery statute requires district attorneys to open their investigative files in felony cases to defense lawyers who request such access prior to trial. The law requires DAs to…

An op-ed appearing in the Arizona Republic and authored by Dr. Mark Wellek, past president of the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry, and Carol Kamin, current president of the Arizona Chapter of the Children’s Action Alliance, echoed growing national concerns about the culpability of juvenile offenders who face capital charges despite scientific evidence that they may be less culpable than adult offenders. Wellek and Kamin noted: “American society has many gray areas. Our many…

The Tennessean August 2, 2004 Editorial Executing teenagers is just as wrong as executing the mentally challenged. Dozens of foreign countries, a former president of the United States and a former president of the Soviet Union along with the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association all have said so. Now, it’s time for the U.S. Supreme Court to agree. The court will decide this fall whether to uphold a Missouri Supreme Court decision that set aside the execution of a…

Decided June 24, 2004 The Court ruled on an appeal by the State of Pennsylvania stemming from a federal court ruling that invalidated the death sentence of George Banks, who was on death row for a multiple murder committed in 1982. Banks’ sentence had been overturned on the grounds that the jury instruction during sentencing violated a 1988 Supreme Court ruling that held that jurors did not have to agree unanimously on the existence of mitigating circumstances when determining the appropriate…

The Sun News (Myrtle Beach, SC) July 31, 2004 Editorial Executing people for crimes they committed as 16- and 17-year-olds violates widely accepted human rights norms. The Supreme Court has the chance this fall to step in to affirm that teenage criminals ought not be sentenced to death because they are not old enough to be fully responsible for their judgment and their actions. The juvenile death penalty, in place in 19 states and actively used in seven, qualifies as “cruel and unusual…

In Alameda County, California, prosecutors announced that they will not seek the death penalty against Richard Dean Wilson because it is unlikely that a jury would return a death sentence. State authories say the decision to seek a life sentence for Wilson avoids a costly death penalty case and saves taxpayer dollars from financing a lengthy trial with an uncertain outcome. Wilson pleaded no contest to the murder of Angela Marie Bledsoe. Prosecutor Jim Anderson noted, “This was the best penalty…

The California Supreme Court is asking the state’s attorney general’s office to explain why Fred Freeman’s death sentence should not be reversed on allegations that a now-deceased Superior Court Judge colluded with prosecutors to ensure a capital conviction by eliminating potential Jewish jurors. The Supreme Court issued the show cause order after Freeman’s attorneys filed a claim stating that Freeman was denied a fair trial because Judge Stanley Golde allegedly told prosecutors to keep Jews…