Publications & Testimony

Relying on the fun­da­men­tal impor­tance of a defen­dan­t’s right to a jury tri­al, a fed­er­al appeals court issed a rul­ing that could over­turn many sen­tences in Arizona, Montana, and Idaho. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit ruled that an inmate’s sub­stan­tive con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were at issue when he was sen­tenced under state laws that per­mit­ted judges instead of juries to deter­mine eli­gi­bil­i­ty for the death penal­ty. By a vote of 8 – 3, the court ruled that the 2002 Supreme Court’s…

A recent inves­ti­ga­tion by a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor into the Chicago-based ​“Ford Heights Four” case revealed that police and pros­e­cu­tors per­pet­u­at­ed a ​“tun­nel vision” men­tal­i­ty that kept them from pur­su­ing the real per­pe­tra­tors of the crime. Former pros­e­cu­tor and judge Gino DiVito led the inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed by the FBI and fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors. He not­ed that the flawed Ford Heights Four inves­ti­ga­tion of Dennis Williams, Verneal Jimerson, Kenneth Adams, and Willie Rainge was tainted…

The fol­low­ing are excerpts from Summerlin v. Stewart, No. 98 – 99002 (9^th Cir. Sept. 2, 2003): (page num­bers refer to the on-line ver­sion; sub­heads are not part of the…

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has released its lat­est edi­tion of ​“Death Row USA.” The total num­ber of inmates on death row again declined from the pre­vi­ous report, mark­ing a sharp rever­sal from the years of death row increas­es between 1973 and 2000. A total of 3,517 inmates remain on death row. The only juris­dic­tions record­ing death row pop­u­la­tion increas­es were Alabama, Arizona, California, Missouri, Nevada, Oregon, Virginia, and the Federal Government. See Death Row USA. (NAACP-LDF, Death…

Delaware County pros­e­cu­tors and defense attor­neys for Nicholas James Yarris have joint­ly asked the court to vacate his 1982 cap­i­tal con­vic­tion after DNA test­ing showed that Yarris was not the source of evi­dence found on the body of the vic­tim. While pros­e­cu­tors have the option of retry­ing Yarris, defense attor­neys note that they are ​“not aware of any evi­dence in Nick’s case” that is strong enough to war­rant a new tri­al. If pros­e­cu­tors decline to retry the case, it is expect­ed that Yarris will…

Jurors sen­tenced a man accused of rap­ing his step-daugh­ter in Louisiana to death based on a state law that was adopt­ed in 1995. The law states that the death penal­ty can be sought for aggra­vat­ed rape if the vic­tim is under the age of 12. The oth­er penal­ty avail­able to the jurors was a manda­to­ry sen­tence of life in prison with­out parole. (Associated Press, August 27, 2003) Since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976, no one in the United States has been exe­cut­ed except for a crime involving…

Opposition to the death penal­ty appears to grow the longer a coun­try has been with­out the pun­ish­ment. A Gallup International poll in 2000 found that 60% of west­ern Europeans opposed the death penal­ty, while 60% of east­ern Europeans (where abo­li­tion is still being debat­ed) sup­port the death penal­ty. In France, a TNS Sofres poll revealed that two decades after abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, 49% of respon­dents opposed rein­tro­duc­tion of the pol­i­cy com­pared with 44% who want­ed to reinstate…

Following U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf’s opin­ion in the fed­er­al cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion of Gary Lee Sampson express­ing his reser­va­tions about the risks of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent (click here for arti­cle), the Buffalo News raised sim­i­lar con­cerns in a recent…

In a 4 – 3 deci­sion to vacate the death sen­tence of juve­nile offend­er Christopher Simmons, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the juve­nile death penal­ty vio­lates the nation’s evolv­ing stan­dards of decen­cy and is there­fore uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Noting that ​“a nation­al con­sen­sus has devel­oped against the exe­cu­tion of juve­nile offend­ers,” the Court’s opin­ion cit­ed evi­dence such as the grow­ing num­ber of states that have banned the prac­tice. The Court resen­tenced Simmons to life in prison without…

Cook County pros­e­cu­tors have dropped all charges against Michael Evans and Paul Terry, two men who had been con­vict­ed of rap­ing and mur­der­ing a 9‑year-old girl in 1976. Following DNA test­ing that cleared the Illinois men, the state freed Evans and Terry 26 years after they were sen­tenced to serve 200 to 400 years in prison for the crime. (In many states, the defen­dants could have been sen­tenced to death and exe­cut­ed before their exon­er­a­tion.) The men were 17 at the time of the crime, and no…