Testimony and Statements

SANTA FE — Governor Bill Richardson today signed House Bill 285, Repeal of the Death Penalty. The Governor’s remarks follow: Today marks the end of a long, personal journey for me and the issue of the death penalty. Throughout my adult life, I have been a firm believer in the death penalty as a just punishment — in very rare instances, and only for the most heinous crimes. I still believe that. But six years ago, when I took office as Governor of the State of New Mexico, I started to…

New Jersey Senator Raymond Lesniak delivered the following speech at the Memorial de Caen International Human Rights Competition in Caen, France on Sunday, February 1,2009. The competition included lawyers from Washington, D.C., France, Belgium, Guinea, Senegal, and Switzerland with speech topics ranging from governmental to military abuses of human rights. The Senator’s speech below won first place in the international competition. He will donate his first-place winnings, roughly $9,740 from…

Testimony of Richard C. Dieter, Executive Director, Death Penalty Information Center, before the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment regarding the costs of the death penalty and related issues (Sept. 5, 2008)

Testimony of Richard C. Dieter, Executive Director, Death Penalty Information Center, before the Nevada Advisory Commission on the Administration of Justice regarding the costs of the death penalty and related issues (July 7, 2008; telephonic testimony)

On June 16, 2008, the Council of the European Union (EU) meeting in Luxembourg released a statement on General Affairs and External Relations. The document contained a restatement of its 1998 Human Rights Guideline on the death penalty. The Council, consisting of almost all Foreign Ministers in the EU, stated that it “reaffirms that working towards universal abolition of the death penalty constitutes an integral objective of the EU’s human rights policy.” The Council reasserted the “opposition…

On April 8, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on “The Adequacy of Representation in Capital Cases.” Sen. Russ Feingold (D‑WI) presided over the session of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, which heard testimony from a variety of experts including Michael Greco, former President of the American Bar Association, Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, the Honorable Carolyn Temin of the Court of Common Pleas in Pennsylvania, and Donald…

NEWS RELEASE Governor Jon S. Corzine December 17, 2007 FOR MORE INFORMATION: Press Office 609 – 777-2600 Governor Jon S. Corzine Remarks as Delivered December 17, 2007 Good morning everyone. Thank you all for being here. Today, December 17^th 2007, is a momentous day — a day of progress — for the State of New Jersey and for the millions of people across our nation and around the globe who reject the death penalty as a moral or practical response to the grievous, even heinous, crime of murder.

The American Bar Association (ABA) renewed its call for a nationwide halt to executions following a series of state studies that found serious problems in their death penalty systems. “After carefully studying the way states across the spectrum handle executions, it has become crystal clear that the process is deeply flawed. The death penalty system is rife with irregularity,” said Stephen F. Hanlon (pictured), chairman of the ABA Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project. During the…

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