Publications & Testimony

Baltimore County Judge Dana M. Levitz recent­ly sen­tenced a man con­vict­ed of mur­der to two life terms with­out parole, in part because of its pos­si­ble effects on the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. Levitz said,​“The dev­as­tat­ing effect that this unend­ing lit­i­ga­tion has on the inno­cent fam­i­lies of the vic­tims is incal­cu­la­ble. By impos­ing a death sen­tence, I ensure that the vic­tim’s fam­i­lies will be sub­ject­ed to many more years of appeals.” Family mem­bers also not­ed that the…

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican, reit­er­at­ed his oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Bloomberg not­ed,​“The death penal­ty I’ve always had a prob­lem with, because too many times in the past you’ve seen inno­cent peo­ple incar­cer­at­ed and, trag­i­cal­ly, every once in a while they’ve been exe­cut­ed. And until you can show me that the process nev­er would ever con­vict some­body that lat­er on we find out was inno­cent of a crime, mur­der is mur­der no matter who…

A new report by Amnesty International,​“The Exclusion of Child Offenders from the Death Penalty Under General International Law,” exam­ines the evi­dence sup­port­ing the con­clu­sion that the use of the death penal­ty against juve­nile offend­ers is pro­hib­it­ed under cus­tom­ary inter­na­tion­al law. The prac­tice is already pro­hib­it­ed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. William F. Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…