Publications & Testimony

Although New York Law School Professor Robert Blecker and Columbia Law School Professor James Liebman fre­quent­ly take oppos­ing sides in pub­lic debates on the death penal­ty, the two men recent­ly revealed their ​“com­mon ground” through a co-authored opin­ion col­umn in the Houston Chronicle. Calling on leg­is­la­tors in Texas and else­where to enact a series of death penal­ty reforms to ensure accu­ra­cy and improve fair­ness, Blecker and Liebman…

A recent Fox News poll found that 69% of Americans favor the death penal­ty for per­sons con­vict­ed of pre­med­i­tat­ed mur­der, a drop of 7 per­cent­age points from the num­ber of respon­dents sup­port­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1997. The poll revealed that 23% of respon­dents opposed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, and 8% were not sure. In pre­vi­ous years, sup­port for the death penal­ty reg­is­tered 76% in 1997, 74% in 1998, 68% in 2000, and…

The British Court of Appeal has over­turned George Kelly’s 1950 mur­der con­vic­tion more than half a cen­tu­ry after Kelly was exe­cut­ed for the mur­der of a Liverpool movie the­ater man­ag­er. In his rul­ing, Judge Bernard Rix called the con­vic­tion ​“a mis­car­riage of jus­tice which must be deeply regret­ted” and not­ed that the case against Kelly was entire­ly cir­cum­stan­tial and lacked any foren­sic evi­dence. The case was reex­am­ined after new evi­dence of Kelly’s inno­cence emerged in 1991. The Criminal Cases…

U.S. Magistrate Jerry Davis has found that the way inmates are treat­ed on Mississippi’s death row con­sti­tutes cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment in vio­la­tion of the Eighth Amendment. Noting that the death row at Patchman prison is so harsh and filthy that inmates are being dri­ven insane, Davis stat­ed, ​“No one in a civ­i­lized soci­ety should be forced to live under con­di­tions that force expo­sure to anoth­er per­son­’s bod­i­ly wastes. No mat­ter how heinous the crime com­mit­ted, there is no excuse for such…

On May 28^th, Virginia is sched­uled to elec­tro­cute Percy Levar Walton, a Virginia death row inmate who does not know what year it is or that he can­not eat at Burger King once he has been exe­cut­ed. In a pend­ing clemen­cy peti­tion to Virginia Governor Mark Warner and in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Walton’s attor­neys pre­sent­ed expert med­ical evi­dence, includ­ing tests by prison doc­tors, show­ing that their client suf­fers from schiz­o­phre­nia and psy­chosis. They note that prison guards call…

In ​“Forced Medication of Legally Incompetent Prisoners: A Primer,” Kathy Swedlow uses cas­es such as Singleton v. Norris to exam­ine the legal back­ground and heat­ed debate sur­round­ing the issue of invol­un­tary treat­ment of death row pris­on­ers to make them sane enough for exe­cu­tion. Swedlow notes that many of those who sup­port cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment find the hold­ing in Singleton (which allows forcible med­ica­tion) unset­tling. She con­cludes that ​“even assum­ing Singelton’s guilt, the forcible medication…

Dave Lindorff’s arti­cle ​“Unjust Executions” goes beyond the issue of inno­cence and explores cas­es where guilty defen­dants may have been exe­cut­ed despite uncon­sti­tu­tion­al tri­als. The arti­cle, avail­able on Salon​.com (May 6, 2003), fea­tures exam­ples of courts bar­ring new evi­dence and com­ments from death penal­ty experts such as Robert Blecker of New York Law School, a staunch death penal­ty advo­cate, who nev­er­the­less admits that: ​“There are def­i­nite­ly plen­ty of sen­tenc­ing errors where those who…

The Texas Senate passed leg­is­la­tion (S.B. 1045) to cre­ate a joint inter­im com­mit­tee on post-con­vic­tion exon­er­a­tions. The com­mit­tee will study wrong­ful con­vic­tions in the state and iden­ti­fy appro­pri­ate improve­ments in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to pre­vent such errors in the future. The nine mem­bers of the com­mit­tee will include a state’s attoney, two mem­bers cho­sen from the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, two mem­bers of the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, a judge, and two law…

Kentucky Governor Paul Patton said that he will com­mute the death sen­tence of Kevin Stanford, a juve­nile offend­er whose 1989 case before the U.S. Supreme Court result­ed in a rul­ing allow­ing the exe­cu­tion of those who were 16 or 17-years-old at the time of their crime. This will be the first time Patton has com­mut­ed a death sen­tence since he took office, and he not­ed in his announce­ment that the jus­tice sys­tem ​“per­pet­u­at­ed an injus­tice” in Stanford’s case. Stanford has been on Kentucky’s death…

Juries in 15 of the last 16 fed­er­al cap­i­tal tri­als have declined to impose the death penal­ty, despite a more aggres­sive pur­suit of this pun­ish­ment by the Justice Department. Since President George Bush took office, 15% of the cap­i­tal tri­als have result­ed in death sen­tences, com­pared to 46% of cas­es in which the death penal­ty was sought from 1988 to 2000. Legal experts believe that over­reach­ing by pros­e­cu­tors and some jurors’ grow­ing unease with the death penal­ty may account for the trend.