Publications & Testimony

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…

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…

In​“Capital Punishment in Colorado: 1859 – 1972,” University of Colorado pro­fes­sor and death penal­ty expert Michael Radelet reviews the his­to­ry of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Colorado. In the arti­cle, Radelet reviews each of the state’s exe­cu­tions dur­ing that time peri­od and uses the data to show gen­er­al pat­terns regard­ing the aver­age time between con­vic­tion and exe­cu­tion, types of crimes and num­ber of vic­tims, and the logis­tics of car­ry­ing out the exe­cu­tions. 74…

Pennsylvania death row inmate Nicholas James Yarris may become the next per­son to be freed from death row. In light of new DNA evi­dence that excludes Yarris as the per­son respon­si­ble for the 1981 rape and mur­der for which he was con­vict­ed, U.S. District Court Judge James Giles said that Yarris must be freed or grant­ed a new tri­al in Delaware County with­in two weeks. Giles gave the Delaware County dis­trict attor­ney’s office and defense attor­neys 10 days to con­firm that the new…

The most recent newslet­ter pro­duced by the End to Capital Punishment Movement USA (ECPM USA) high­lights devel­op­ments in the orga­ni­za­tion’s aim to strength­en the cross-Atlantic dia­logue on the death penal­ty. Among oth­er items, the newslet­ter con­tains arti­cles on state reports on the death penal­ty, the Council of Europe sem­i­nars on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment that were recent­ly held in Illinois and Washington, DC, and infor­ma­tion about the Second World Conference on the Death…

The fol­low­ing excerpts are from Judge Mark Wolf’s opin­ion allow­ing the fed­er­al cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion of Gary Lee Sampson to pro­ceed. In his deci­sion, Judge Wolf of the Federal District Court in Boston expressed reser­va­tions about the risks of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent and appeared to crit­i­cize the Justice Department’s zeal­ous approach to seek­ing cap­i­tal con­vic­tions. The head­ings for these excerpts, which are not part of the orig­i­nal text, are fol­lowed by page numbers…

A new report by Michael Mears of the Office of the Multi-County Public Defender pro­vides a detailed exam­i­na­tion of every death penal­ty tri­al in Georgia since the state passed its cur­rent death penal­ty statute in 1973. This resource con­tains a list­ing of death penal­ty cas­es by name of the defen­dant, name of the coun­ty, name of the judi­cial cir­cuit, as well as the dis­po­si­tion of every death penal­ty case. It also pro­vides a brief overview of the his­toric role Georgia has…

In a recent Greensboro News & Record op-ed, Marshall Hurley, a long-time Republican in North Carolina, ques­tioned giv­ing the state author­i­ty to car­ry out exe­cu­tions when the cur­rent prac­tice of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment fails to meet con­ser­v­a­tive stan­dards and risks innocent…

The New York Times Magazine recent­ly explored the life of Stanley Williams, an orig­i­nal founder of the​“Crips” gang and a con­vict­ed mur­der­er who has been on death row in San Quentin prison for more…