Publications & Testimony

As the Texas leg­isla­tive ses­sion came to a close, crim­i­nal jus­tice reform advo­cates gave law­mak­ers a fail­ing grade for their work in address­ing prob­lems in the state’s legal sys­tem. Senator Rodney Ellis of Houston joined an array of legal experts to crit­i­cize the state leg­is­la­tors’ inabil­i­ty to pass mea­sures to end the exe­cu­tion of juve­nile offend­ers, to strength­en the con­sular noti­fi­ca­tion process for for­eign nation­als, and to require the Texas Board of…

Charles B. Blackmar, senior judge of Missouri’s Supreme Court from 1982 – 1992, recent­ly called for con­sid­er­a­tion of abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty. In a let­ter to the edi­tor that appeared in the Kansas City Star,…

The Legislative Coordinating Council of Kansas, a group of leg­isla­tive lead­ers who rep­re­sent the Kansas leg­is­la­ture when it’s not in ses­sion, recent­ly autho­rized com­mit­tees to study three aspects of the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment law this sum­mer. Among the top­ics under review are the cost of impos­ing the death penal­ty, the state’s fund­ing of the Board of Indigents’ Defense Services and its Death Penalty Unit, and the effec­tive­ness of laws to ensure that mentally ill…

The ACLU Capital Punishment Project recent­ly released​“Three Decades Later: Why We Need A Temporary Halt on Executions,” a report that comes just over 30 years after the Supreme Court’s Furman v. Georgia deci­sion that placed a tem­po­rary halt on exe­cu­tions because the death penal­ty was being applied in an arbi­trary, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, and capri­cious man­ner. While the Supreme Court upheld state cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statutes writ­ten after Furman in its 1976 Gregg v. Georgia…

The American Bar Association (ABA) has voiced sup­port for leg­is­la­tion to impose a two-year mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in North Carolina while the state stud­ies its death penal­ty. In its announce­ment, the ABA not­ed a​“grow­ing con­sen­sus with­in the legal com­mu­ni­ty that North Carolina urgent­ly needs a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions until it eval­u­ates issues of fair­ness, due process and pos­si­ble racial bias in its death penal­ty sys­tem.” The bill, which was recently…

Houston Police Chief C.O. Bradford said that crim­i­nal defen­dants in Texas are at the mer­cy of pros­e­cu­tors in an unfair sys­tem that empha­sizes win­ning rather than jus­tice. Bradford said that he believes there is suf­fi­cient prob­a­ble cause to con­vene a court of inquiry to inves­ti­gate the entire Police Department crime lab, not just the DNA por­tion (see below). Bradford also voiced sup­port for changes that would help to bal­ance the Texas jus­tice sys­tem, which he believes…

As Kansas law­mak­ers strug­gle to make ends meet, some are call­ing for an exam­i­na­tion of the costs asso­ci­at­ed with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Senators Steve Morris and Anthony Hensley have oppos­ing views on the death penal­ty, but the men recent­ly joined forces to pro­pose an audit of the state’s death penal­ty. Among oth­er items, the audit will review $9 mil­lion in expens­es filed by the Board of Indigents’ Defense Services between 1995 – 2002. The fund­ing was used to defend those…

An edi­to­r­i­al by Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, past pres­i­dent of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, notes that crime labs are over­whelm­ing­ly back­logged with work and that defi­cien­cies of per­son­nel, space and equip­ment in foren­sic sci­ence labs often lead to shod­dy prac­tices and erro­neous test results, as recent­ly exem­pli­fied by the prob­lems uncov­ered at the Houston Police Department DNA lab (see below).

For near­ly two decades, Dennis Halstead, John Kogut, and John Restivo main­tained their inno­cence in the 1985 mur­der of 16-year-old Theresa Fusco. Although DNA test­ing in the 1990’s cast doubt on their guilt, the men remained in jail in New York because a judge deemed the tests not reli­able enough to over­turn the con­vic­tions. Now the men have been freed from prison after pros­e­cu­tors joined defense attor­neys in ask­ing a sec­ond judge to vacate the con­vic­tions based on more…

An arti­cle in the Wisconsin Law Review,​“The Right to Effective Assistance of Capital Postconviction Counsel: Constitutional Implications of Statutory Grants of Capital Counsel” by Celestine Richards McConville, exam­ines the need for expe­ri­enced and effec­tive coun­sel dur­ing state and fed­er­al cap­i­tal post­con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings. The author notes that,​“Despite the impor­tant role of post­con­vic­tion coun­sel, the United States Supreme Court has held that criminal…