Publications & Testimony

According to a report by the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform, an F.B.I. pol­i­cy to pro­tect Boston infor­mants who were known mur­der­ers result­ed in the Bureau allow­ing at least two inno­cent men to be sent to death row. Investigators not­ed that the pol­i­cy ​“must be con­sid­ered one of the great­est fail­ures in the his­to­ry of fed­er­al law enforce­ment” and had ​“dis­as­trous con­se­quences.” According to the report, the F.B.I. was so intent on pro­tect­ing guilty infor­mants that it passed up…

By a vote of 115 – 0, mem­bers of the Illinois House approved a series of reforms to the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem. The leg­isla­tive pack­age gives the Illinois Supreme Court greater pow­er to throw out unjust ver­dicts, gives defen­dants more access to evi­dence, and bars the death penal­ty in cas­es based on a sin­gle wit­ness. The reforms are among the 80 rec­om­men­da­tions made by the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment, formed in 2000 by for­mer Governor George Ryan to address wrongful…

The United Kingdom’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s Human Rights Annual Report 2003 includes a review of Britain’s offi­cial actions to address con­cerns about the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in the United States. In addi­tion to an out­line of the U.K.‘s reac­tion to sig­nif­i­cant death penal­ty devel­op­ments in the U.S., the report high­lights the sharp dif­fer­ence between British and U.S. cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment poli­cies. It…

An 8‑part series titled ​“Murder, Race, Justice: The State vs. Darryl Hunt” exam­ines the case against Darryl Hunt, who has been in prison in North Carolina for near­ly 20 years despite cred­i­ble evi­dence of his inno­cence. The series con­cludes a six-month inves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed by The Winston-Salem Journal that found that police used ques­tion­able tac­tics and unre­li­able wit­ness­es to con­vict Hunt for the 1984 rape and mur­der of reporter Deborah Sykes. It also reveals that instead of…

In his lat­est book, ​“Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer’s Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty,” attor­ney and author Scott Turow pro­vides a detailed look at his per­son­al jour­ney with the death penal­ty issue from his days as a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor to his more recent ser­vice as a mem­ber of the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment. In addi­tion to Turow’s first-hand account, the book ana­lyzes the poten­tial rea­sons for and against the death penal­ty, dis­cuss­es its impact on vic­tims’ families…

In a report exam­in­ing Virginia’s death penal­ty sys­tem, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has urged the state to enact a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions until its flawed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem is reformed. The report, ​“Broken Justice: The Death Penalty in Virginia,” reviews issues such as the qual­i­ty of defense coun­sel, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, racial bias, inno­cence, and the exe­cu­tion of those with men­tal retar­da­tion and juve­nile offend­ers. The find­ings, which were endorsed by a…

Psychiatrist Cynthia Smith, who served as a key wit­ness in the 1990 death penal­ty case against John Daniels of North Carolina, has recant­ed her tes­ti­mo­ny because state pros­e­cu­tors with­held impor­tant infor­ma­tion from her. ​“My tes­ti­mo­ny was erro­neous with gross errors. Not only did the pros­e­cu­tion fail to give me all the rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion, I did not look for the infor­ma­tion either,” White said in an affi­davit about the tes­ti­mo­ny she gave in her first and only cap­i­tal case. She added, ​“John…

The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released its year­ly report on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment on November 4, 2003. The fig­ures report­ed were for the year 2002. (See also DPIC’s Year End Report 2002). The BJS report­ed that death sen­tences in the U.S. have declined for four straight years, drop­ping by almost 50% since 1998. DPIC will release a report with 2003 fig­ures in mid-December 2003. Read Capital Punishment,…

In a Seattle Times op-ed reflect­ing on the plea agree­ment for ser­i­al killer Gary Ridgway result­ing in a life with­out parole sen­tence (read more), Washington State Superior Court Judge David A. Nichols stat­ed that the ​“death penal­ty as a response to any crim­i­nal behav­ior no longer has valid­i­ty and should be repealed, because it is impos­si­ble to admin­is­ter with jus­tice and fair­ness.” He further…