Publications & Testimony

The Angolite, a news magazine produced by inmates at Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary, highlights the commutation of Herbert Welcome, a man with mental retardation whose death sentence was lifted by Governor Mike Foster in 2003. The article follows Welcome’s decades-long struggle to have his sentence commuted, including a 1988 recommendation for clemency that was never signed. Years later, Welcome’s clemency effort was reignited by his attorneys from the Center for Equal Justice in New…

Texas plans to execute David Harris on June 30^th on the basis of a prediction in 1986 that he would be a future danger even if sentenced to life in prison. Dr. Edward Gripon testified that Harris posed a substantial risk of committing further violent acts, even though Gripon had never met or examined Harris. During his nearly two decades on death row, Harris has had only minor infractions, such as having too many postage stamps or hanging a clothesline in his cell. In a 1983 brief to the U.S.

After deliberating for 20 hours over three days, the jurors who recently found Terry Nichols (pictured) guilty of murder in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing expressed some of the anguish that choosing between life and death caused them. “It was tough. We had found it much easier to arrive at a guilty verdict, but the penalty phase was much harder,” said juror Terry Zellmer. Cecil Reeder, a Korean War veteran who supported the death penalty for Nichols, said, “This shook me as deep as I’ve ever…

As Maryland prepares for the execution of Steven Oken this week, two Maryland parents whose daughter was murdered six years ago provided a victims’ family perspective on capital punishment in The Washington Post: “Oken committed the crimes for which he is sentenced to die back in 1987. Anyone who has seen the survivors of victims feels sorrow for the pain they have had to bear as the case has worn on. But the death penalty holds little promise of helping survivors deal with their emotional…

A Kentucky prosecutor raised religious objections to the death penalty in asking to step aside in the case of two men charged with murder. J. Stewart Schneider, the commonwealth’s attorney in Boyd County in northeastern Kentucky, said Thursday he filed his motion to withdraw from the case after reflections at a religious retreat. Schneider also is a minister with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). “I spent that weekend in prayer,” he said. “The more I thought about it, the more…

Three new items have been added to DPIC’s Web site, including a summary of a new report from The Sentencing Project, the complete results of a recent North Carolina poll, and an updated “Special Resources from DPIC” Web page: 1. A summary of important facts from The Sentencing Project’s new report: “The Meaning of ‘Life’: Long Prison Sentences in Context.” For example, the report notes that the use of life-without-parole sentences has expanded significantly — of the lifers in prison, one in four…

In a unanimous vote that will soon add their nation to a lengthy list of countries around the world that have either halted executions or abandoned capital punishment altogether, the lower house of Tajikistan’s Parliament has adopted a moratorium on the death penalty. Passage by the upper house and the signature of the President are reportedly assured. The Tajik moratorium will leave Uzbekistan as the only republic in Central Asia that continues to carry out executions. Experts on Central Asia…

Professor emeritus James J. Megivern of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington examines the shift in Roman Catholic Church teaching regarding capital punishment in “Judge Noonan, Church Change, and the Death Penalty,” published by the University of St. Thomas Law Journal. In the article, Megivern outlines Judge John T. Noonan’s remarks on this issue and provides additional insight about the historical milestones that have occurred as the Church began to issue public calls for an end to…

A May 2004 poll by the political consulting firm of Ayres McHenry and Associates found that 66% of respondents support capital punishment for murder, a figure that reflects the lower support for the death penalty found in several polls taken in 2003. (Ayres McHenry and Associates, May 2004) In 2003, polling results published by Gallup Poll, ABC News, and the Pew Research Center all measured support for capital punishment at 64%, significantly below the public’s support for capital punishment in…