Publications & Testimony

During the past 10 years, most Commonwealth African countries have moved toward abolishing the death penalty and today almost half of these countries have abandoned the practice according to Amnesty International. Government leaders from around the continent recently met in Entebbe, Uganda, for a two-day summit to discuss capital punishment. Five Southern African Development Countries have abolished capital punishment, and the number of countries ending the death penalty in the Economic…

By Lee Bowman Recent popular films depicting teenagers suddenly housed in adult bodies have more than a little truth in them. The latest brain research has found strong evidence that when it comes to maturity, organization and control, key parts of the brain related to emotions, judgment and “thinking ahead” are the last to arrive. “It seems that regulation of impulse control is the last on board and often the first to leave in the brain as we age,” said Dr. Ruben Gur, a professor of…

By Claudia Wallis; Kristina Dell, with reporting by Alice Park/New York Five young men in sneakers and jeans troop into a waiting room at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., and drape themselves all over the chairs in classic collapsed-teenager mode, trailing backpacks, a CD player and a laptop loaded with computer games. It’s midafternoon, and they are, of course, tired, but even so their presence adds a jangly, hormonal buzz to the bland, institutional…

The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board has voted to recommend clemency for death row inmate Osbaldo Torres, a Mexican foreign national who is scheduled to be executed on May 18. The Board made its decision after an hour-long hearing that included testimony from Carlos de Icaza, Mexican Ambassador to the United States. Icaza told the board that Mexico opposes capital punishment in all cases, and that this case was particularly troublesome because no proof was presented that Torres was the shooter…

“America’s Death Penalty: Beyond Repair?” examines capital punishment in the U.S. since 1976 through a variety of scholarly essays that look at critical issues such as innocence, race, arbitrariness, and international human rights law. Reknown death penalty expert and law professor Tony Amsterdam notes, “In these essays, some of our most knowledgeable students of capital punishment take a hard, no-nonsense look at how it actually operates and what drives America’s passionate refusal either to…

As Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney seeks to reinstate capital punishment with a “foolproof” system(see earlier What’s New item), a news investigation has revealed that 22 state men have served lengthy prison terms over the last two decades for rapes and murders that they did not commit. Most of the wrongly convicted inmates were black. Experts say that Boston’s Suffolk County prosecutors have wrongly convicted the second highest number of innocent people in the nation, falling closely behind…

After a review of North Carolina’s death penalty, the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers has issued a series of 11 recommendations that aim to address issues of fairness and accuracy in the state’s capital punishment statutes. In addition to recommendations addressing hidden evidence, mistaken eyewitness identifications, discrimination, and unreliable confessions, the group urged North Carolina lawmakers to enact a moratorium on executions while they consider implementing reforms to make…

Questions about the accuracy and fairness of Alabama’s death penalty continue to surface as illustrated by a series of recent federal court rulings granting two new trials and one new sentencing hearing. All of the rulings were based on inadequate representation provided to the defendants. “Counsel simply provided no defense to the death penalty,” Chief U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon of Birmingham wrote March 31 in giving one of the inmates a new trial. The man has been on death row 22 years.

District attorneys from several Massachusetts counties, including Suffolk, Norfolk, Middlesex, Essex and Barnstable, had strong reservations about Governor Mitt Romney’s attempt to establish a nearly “foolproof” death penalty system in the state. Some noted that nothing can eliminate the possibility of human error in such cases. The district attorneys said that the state’s medical examiner’s office and crime labs are currently overwhelmed with work, and that the labs do not have the capacity to…