Publications & Testimony

In a 7 – 2 deci­sion, the United States Supreme Court reversed and remand­ed the sen­tence of Maryland death row inmate Kevin Wiggins on the basis of inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion by his orig­i­nal tri­al attor­neys. Standard pro­ce­dure in Maryland at the time of the tri­al includ­ed prepa­ra­tion of a ​“social his­to­ry” report that would con­tain mit­i­ga­tion inves­ti­ga­tions regard­ing the case. As no such report was pre­pared or even request­ed, Justice O’Connor, writ­ing for the Court, remarked that “[a]ny reasonably…

In addi­tion to arti­cles about juve­nile jus­tice and mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers, the lat­est edi­tion of The Angolite — a prison news mag­a­zine pub­lished by Angola Prison in Louisiana — fea­tures a sec­tion on film­mak­ing with­in prison walls. Angola Prison has host­ed dozens of film crews over the years, and has been the shoot­ing site for award-win­ning films such as ​“Dead Man Walking,” ​“Monster’s Ball,” and ​“The Farm.” (The Angolite, November/​December 2002) See…

Jason McCartney, a sur­vivor of the 2002 ter­ror­ist bomb­ing of a Bali night­club and a for­mer Australian foot­ball play­er, said a life­time sen­tence in an Indonesian jail would be a harsh enough pun­ish­ment for the men who plot­ted the attack. ​“At first, I prob­a­bly thought with my ini­tial anger that (the death penal­ty) is the way to go,” said McCartney. ​“It’s var­ied a bit. Sometimes I won­der if that’s an easy way out for them, the death penalty…It’s a hard one.” McCartney, who sustained serious…

Attorneys in Missouri and Pennsylvania will reveal two sep­a­rate exon­er­a­tions from their death rows. In Pennsylvania, attor­neys for Nicholas James Yarris will announce in a press con­fer­ence today (July 28, 2003) that three sep­a­rate DNA tests exclude Yarris from the rape and mur­der for which he was con­vict­ed. Yarris, 41, has spent 21 years on Pennsylvania’s death row, and has always maintained his…

The Georgia General Assembly has passed leg­is­la­tion (HB 777) to cre­ate a state-wide pub­lic defend­er sys­tem, includ­ing an Office of the Georgia Capital Defender to focus sole­ly on death penal­ty cas­es. The new office will assume respon­si­bil­i­ty for the defense of all death penal­ty tri­al and direct appeal cas­es in Georgia. Additional attor­neys and inves­ti­ga­tors will be added to the pub­lic defend­er sys­tem to assume respon­si­bil­i­ty for the additional…

Doubts about the appro­pri­ate­ness of a death sen­tence have prompt­ed for­mer pros­e­cu­tor Thomas Vanes to call for new DNA test­ing in the case of Darnell Williams, a man he sent to death row as a Lake County, Indiana state’s attor­ney. Williams is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on Friday, August 1. Vanes and John Gnajek, a mem­ber of the jury that sent Williams to death row, have filed a suit in fed­er­al court ask­ing for a stay of Williams’ exe­cu­tion until new DNA test­ing is com­plet­ed on blood evidence…

Pentagon gen­er­al coun­sel William J. Haynes II has assured British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the U.S. will not seek the death penal­ty against two British cit­i­zens fac­ing tri­al on ter­ror­ism charges before mil­i­tary tri­bunals. The two men, Feroz Abbasi and Moazzam Begg, are among the 680 pris­on­ers from 42 coun­tries being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in con­nec­tion with the cam­paign against ter­ror­ism. Prior to Blair’s recent vis­it to Washington, dur­ing which he raised the issue with President…

Stating that ​“this Court is unwill­ing to con­tort the law of fed­er­al kid­nap­ping,” and that fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors failed to present suf­fi­cient evi­dence to sup­port that charge dur­ing the recent cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al of Jay Lentz, a fed­er­al judge in Virginia has over­turned the jury’s guilty ver­dict in the case. In the rul­ing, U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee crit­i­cized the gov­ern­ment for try­ing what he deemed a local homi­cide case in fed­er­al court. Earlier, the jury had reject­ed the government’s…

After years of sup­port­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, for­mer San Francisco pros­e­cu­tor Bill Fazio recent­ly changed his posi­tion on the death penal­ty. Fazio, who now serves as a defense attor­ney, stat­ed, ​“Life with­out parole is a viable alter­na­tive.” He not­ed that he began to recon­sid­er his stance on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment after the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed his sole death penal­ty con­vic­tion. Fazio not­ed, ​“It was an error by the tri­al judge, and it made me real­ize that after 21 years there was still…

Governor Rod Blagojevich has signed a mea­sure requir­ing police to record their inter­ro­ga­tions of homi­cide sus­pects. The gov­er­nor’s sig­na­ture makes Illinois the first state to offi­cial­ly imple­ment such a pol­i­cy. Blagojevich, a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor, not­ed that his pre­vi­ous­ly-voiced con­cerns that video taped inter­ro­ga­tions would impede police from doing their job had been over­rid­den by the knowl­edge that the tapes will yield ​“clear­er, more reli­able” evi­dence for the state’s jus­tice sys­tem. The law…