Publications & Testimony

Michael Lee McCormick has been on Tennessee’s death row for 17 years, but a recent court deci­sion throw­ing out the remain­ing evi­dence against him could result in his free­dom. Judge Doug Meyer ruled that tapes con­tain­ing con­ver­sa­tions between McCormick and an under­cov­er police offi­cer who had befriend­ed him were inad­mis­si­ble due to​“police mis­con­duct.” Meyer not­ed that McCormick, who is an alco­holic, had con­tin­u­al­ly denied his involve­ment in the crime​“until the…

A Tennessee jury took only 2 hours to con­vict and anoth­er hour to sen­tence Richard Taylor to death. Taylor suf­fers from men­tal ill­ness and defend­ed him­self. The tri­al took place 19 years after Taylor’s orig­i­nal 1984 death sen­tence, which was set aside because he had inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion and his com­plex men­­tal-health his­to­ry had not been ful­ly inves­ti­gat­ed. In the years since that rul­ing, Taylor has been deemed incom­pe­tent to stand tri­al, but a judge…

Stephen​“The Rifleman” Flemmi was allowed to plead guilty to 10 mur­ders, drug traf­fick­ing, rack­e­teer­ing and extor­tion, as fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors agreed not to seek the death penal­ty against him in exchange for his coop­er­a­tion with ongo­ing crime inves­ti­ga­tions. Under the terms of the agree­ment, Flemmi — who has also admit­ted to mur­ders in Florida and Oklahoma — will serve a life with­out parole sen­tence in a secure unit reserved for coop­er­at­ing inmates. Among the…

Kenyan gov­ern­ment offi­cials are work­ing to abol­ish the nation’s death penal­ty and replace the pun­ish­ment with life in prison. The rec­om­men­da­tion is cur­rent­ly under review by Kenya’s con­sti­tu­tion­al review con­fer­ence, a body com­prised of mem­bers of par­lia­ment, pro­fes­sion­al bod­ies and reli­gious and civic lead­ers. Kenya has not had an exe­cu­tion since 1987, but 2,618 peo­ple remain on the nation’s death row. Kenya’s assis­tant min­is­ter for home affairs, Wilfred…

“Life on Death Row” is a first-per­­son account of liv­ing under a death sen­tence in Arizona. Written by Arizona death row inmate Robert W. Murray, the book explores how inmates cope with exe­cu­tion war­rants, lethal injec­tion, prison pol­i­tics, and day-to-day life in a super­max prison facil­i­ty. Find more infor­ma­tion about this book. (www​.1st​books​.com) ( Albert Publishing Co. in asso­ci­a­tion with 1^st Books Library, 2003) See…

On October 3, 2003, the Alabama Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly reversed Phillip Tomlin’s death sen­tence and ordered him resen­tenced to life in prison with­out parole, mark­ing the Court’s first rul­ing to cre­ate a stan­dard of review for judi­cial over­ride in the state. Tomlin had been on death row for more than 25 years despite the fact that four juries have rec­om­mend­ed that he receive a life sen­tence for his alleged role in a Mobile, Alabama, revenge killing. In each of those cases,…

In​“Kiss of Death: America’s Love Affair with the Death Penalty,” attor­ney John Bessler presents argu­ments against cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment based on his work as a pro bono attor­ney for death row inmates in Texas. Woven into Bessler’s per­son­al account is an exam­i­na­tion of U.S. cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment prac­tices in con­trast to the absence of the death penal­ty in oth­er nations. The book also address­es the toll exe­cu­tions take on those who par­tic­i­pate in the process. (Northeastern…

The October 2003 edi­tion of the Foreign Service Journal con­tains a series of arti­cles exam­in­ing world opin­ion on the death penal­ty and its effect on U.S. poli­cies. The arti­cles, includ­ing one by DPIC Executive Director Richard Dieter, fea­ture infor­ma­tion on inter­na­tion­al treaties, the expe­ri­ences of for­mer U.S. for­eign diplo­mats, and the effect of the inter­na­tion­al move­ment away from the death penal­ty on the U.S.‘s posi­tion as a leader in human rights. Among the…

In a deci­sion vacat­ing the death penal­ty for Nebraska death row inmate Charles Jess Palmer, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Bataillon declared that elec­tro­cu­tion is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Bataillon wrote,​“In light of evi­dence and evolv­ing stan­dards of decen­cy, the court would find that a death penal­ty sen­tence imposed on a defen­dant in a state that pro­vides elec­tro­cu­tion as its only method of exe­cu­tion is an unnec­es­sary and wan­ton inflic­tion of pain.” Nebraska is the…

The most recent edi­tion of The Angolite, a bimonth­ly mag­a­zine pro­duced by inmates at Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary, focus­es on the Texas death penal­ty. The pub­li­ca­tion’s fea­ture arti­cle,​“If Not For Texas,” is an overview of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Texas com­pared to oth­er states and to nation­al death penal­ty devel­op­ments. The high num­ber of exe­cu­tions in Texas, inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion, inno­cence, juve­niles, race, vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, the mentally…