Entries tagged with “Future dangerousness”
Executions
Time on Death Row
,Apr 22, 2022
One Execution, One Reprieve: Scheduled Executions of Oldest Death-Row Prisoners in Texas and Tennessee Illustrate Aging of Death Row
In a coincidence that brought attention to the aging of death row across the United States, the oldest death-row prisoners in Tennessee and Texas faced execution in their respective states on April 21, 2022. After the U.S. Supreme Court denied stays of execution for both prisoners, their cases took different…
Issues
Apr 15, 2022
Advocacy Group Tells Supreme Court that Negative Stereotypes Distort Perception that Latinos in Death-Penalty Cases Pose Future Danger to Society
An amicus brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Arizona death-row prisoner John Montenegro Cruz presents evidence that Latinx defendants are particularly vulnerable to juror bias regarding determinations of future…
Research
Religion
,Apr 05, 2022
Oldest Texas Death-Row Prisoner Files Petition for Clemency Citing Time on Death Row, False Prediction that He Would be Dangerous in Prison
Texas’ oldest death-row prisoner, Carl Wayne Buntion (pictured), has filed a petition with the state Board of Pardons and Parole seeking commutation of his death sentence to life without parole. Buntion is currently scheduled to be executed on April 21,…
Issues
Jun 07, 2021
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of May 31, 2021
NEWS (6/4/21) — Arizona: The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Lynch v. Arizona, which struck down the state’s unconstitutional refusal to instruct capital-sentencing juries that defendants who are sentenced to life are not eligible for parole, does not provide grounds for a death-row prisoner to seek new state-court review of that…
Issues
Native Americans
,May 03, 2021
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of April 26, 2021
NEWS (4/29/21) — Oklahoma: The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has vacated the convictions and death sentences of two more death-row prisoners who, the court found, had committed their offenses against Native Americans on tribal lands. Applying the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark tribal sovereignty ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma, the court found that the murders for which Benjamin Robert Cole Sr. and James Chandler Ryder…
Issues
Apr 28, 2021
Supreme Court Declines to Review Death Penalty Case in Which Georgia Defendant was Forced to Reenact the Murder While in Shackles
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a Georgia death-penalty case in which the prosecution was permitted to make a visibly shackled defendant reenact the murder in front of the jury, while his defense counsel raised no…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Dec 08, 2020
Jurors and Appellate Prosecutor Say Teen Offender Brandon Bernard Should Not be Executed
As the December 10, 2020 execution date of federal death-row prisoner Brandon Bernard (pictured with his family) approached, jurors and a former prosecutor in his case came forward saying that the teen offender’s life should be spared. Bernard, who was 18 years old at the time of the offense, became the youngest offender executed by the federal government in at least 68…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Women
,Federal Death Penalty
,Oct 19, 2020
U.S. Government Sets Two More Execution Dates, Seeking to Put to Death the First Woman and the Youngest Offender in More Than Six Decades
The federal government intends to continue its unprecedented execution spree into December, scheduling the executions of the first woman and the youngest offender put to death by federal authorities in nearly seven decades. In a Friday evening announcement, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on October 16, 2020 that it had set the execution of Lisa Montgomery (pictured) for December 8 and Brandon Bernard for December…
Issues
Jun 23, 2020
Neuroscience Experts: Brain Science Shows Texas’ Use of Future Dangerousness to Sentence Those Under 21 to Death is Unreliable, Unconstitutional
Three professional organizations and eight practitioners in the fields of neuroscience and neuropsychology have joined a Texas death-row prisoner in challenging the constitutionality of the state’s use of “future dangerousness” findings to impose the death penalty on defendants who were younger than age 21 at the time of their offense. Their brief, filed in the U.S. Supreme Court on June 19, 2020, argues based on “[t]he great weight of scientific evidence” that predictions of whether an…
Issues
Apr 02, 2020
STUDIES — Junk Psychological Science Continues to Infect Death-Penalty Determinations
Courts are failing badly in keeping junk psychological science out of the courtroom in criminal cases, permitting the admission of psychological tests that have never been reviewed for reliability and others that have been found unreliable, a recent study reports. Among the problematic tests, another group of psychologists write, is a “psychopathy checklist” commonly used by prosecutors to argue that a defendant poses a future danger to society and should be sentenced to…
Issues
Dec 26, 2019
Billy Joe Wardlow Faces Execution in Texas Based on False Evidence of Future Dangerousness
Billy Joe Wardlow (pictured) was 18 years old, when he killed 82-year-old Carl Cole during a botched attempt to steal Cole’s car so that Wardlow and his girlfriend could pursue their fantasy of running away from their abusive homes in Carson, Texas to start a new life in Montana. Wardlow, who had no prior history of violence, has regretted his action ever since. In the cover story for the Winter 2020 issue of the magazine The American Scholar,…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Dec 10, 2019
Texas Set to Execute Travis Runnels Based on “Expert” Testimony of Prosecution Investigator Whose False Testimony Has Put 15 on Death Row
Texas is preparing to execute Travis Runnels (pictured) on December 11, 2019 based on the “expert” testimony of a prosecution investigator whose false depiction of prison conditions has helped to put fifteen defendants on the state’s death row. If Runnels is executed, he will be the third person put to death in Texas this year after former Texas Special Prosecution Unit criminal investigator, A.P. Merillat provided false testimony at their…
Issues
Sep 25, 2019
Execution Looms for One Texas Prisoner as Another Receives Stay from Texas Appeals Court
Texas is preparing to execute Robert Sparks (pictured, left), on September 25, 2019, as a second death-row prisoner, Stephen Barbee (pictured, below), received a stay from the Texas Court of Criminal…
Research
May 28, 2019
Amended Bill to Limit Oregon’s Death Penalty Easily Passes State Senate
An amended bill to narrow the circumstances in which the death penalty may be imposed in Oregon has easily passed the state senate. On May 21, 2019, by a vote of 18 – 9, the Oregon Senate passed SB 1013, which would limit the state’s use of capital punishment to three aggravating circumstances and eliminate speculation about a defendant’s future dangerousness from a jury’s capital sentencing deliberations. The bill would allow prosecutors to pursue the death…
Issues
Mar 19, 2019
Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Georgia Death-Penalty Case Involving Racist Juror
For the second time in just over one month, the United States Supreme Court has cleared the way for the execution of an African-American prisoner in the face of strong evidence of racial or religious bias. On March 18, 2019, the Court unanimously declined to hear an appeal from Georgia death-row prisoner Keith Tharpe (pictured), who argued his death sentence was unconstitutionally tainted by the participation of racist white juror who called…
Issues
Feb 28, 2019
Texas Plans to Execute Prisoner Whose Death Sentence Was Influenced by False and Unreliable Testimony
Texas is scheduled to execute Billie Wayne Coble (pictured) on February 28, 2019, despite court findings that two expert witnesses who testified for the prosecution gave “problematic” and “fabricated” testimony at his trial. Coble was sentenced to death in 1990 and resentenced in 2008 after his original sentence was overturned as a result of constitutionally deficient jury instructions. At his resentencing, the issue of future dangerousness presented a…
Issues
Feb 11, 2019
Death-Row Prisoners Ask Supreme Court to Review Georgia, Oklahoma Verdicts Involving Racist Jurors
Georgia death-row prisoner Keith Tharpe (pictured, left) and Oklahoma death-row prisoner Julius Jones (pictured, right) are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to grant them new trials after evidence showed that white jurors who described the defendants with racist slurs participated in deciding their cases. The involvement of the racist jurors, the prisoners say, violated their Sixth Amendment rights to impartial juries. A juror…
Issues
Nov 27, 2018
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Upholds Death Sentence Based on False Psychiatric Testimony
For the second time in less than six months, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has upheld a death sentence that the trial court, lawyers for the prosecution and defense, and mental health experts all agree should not be carried out. On November 21, 2018, in an unpublished and unsigned opinion that misspelled death-row prisoner Jeffery Wood’s name, the court rejected a recommendation by the Kerr County District Court to overturn…
Issues
Executions Overview
,Oct 08, 2018
Law Review: Junk Mental Health Science and the Texas Death Penalty
Junk science is “enabling and perpetuating grave miscarriages of justice” in Texas death-penalty cases. So concludes Professor James Acker in his article, Snake Oil With A Bite: The Lethal Veneer of Science and Texas’s Death Penalty, published in the latest issue of the Albany Law Review. Acker’s article highlights the heightened risks of injustice from pseudo-science and junk science in capital cases in Texas, one of the few states that…
Issues
Dec 08, 2017
Texas District Attorney Asks State to Spare Life of Man She Prosecuted Under Controversial “Law of Parties”
The Texas prosecutor who sought and obtained the death penalty almost 20 years ago against Jeffery Wood (pictured), a man who never killed anyone, has now asked that his sentence be reduced to life in prison. In a letter to the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, sent in August and obtained December 7 by the Texas Tribune, Kerr County District Attorney Lucy Wilke asked the board to recommend that Governor Greg Abbott grant Wood…
Issues
Jun 28, 2017
New Podcast: Duane Buck’s Appeal Lawyer Tells Story of His Case, Discusses Future Dangerousness and Racial Bias
In DPIC’s latest podcast, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Litigation Director Christina Swarns (pictured, center, outside the U.S. Supreme Court following the argument in Buck v. Davis) discusses the issues of race, future dangerousness, and ineffective representation presented in the landmark case. She calls the case — in which a Texas trial lawyer who represented 21 clients sent to death row presented an expert witness who testified that his own client was…
Issues
Jun 28, 2017
The Duane Buck Case
Christina Swarns, litigation director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, speaks with DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham about the case of Texas death-row prisoner Duane Buck and the impact of racial bias on determinations of future dangerousness in death penalty cases. Ms. Swarns represented Mr. Buck in the U.S. Supreme Court in overturning his death sentence after his own lawyer presented an expert witness who gave racially biased testimony that Mr. Buck posed an increased…
Issues
Jun 09, 2017
Duane Buck’s Lawyer Discusses How Future Dangerousness Taints Texas Death Penalty System
Thirty years ago, filmmaker Errol Morris, who directed the documentary “The Thin Blue Line,” helped to exonerate Texas death-row prisoner Dale Adams, falsely accused of murdering a police officer. During the course of making the film, Morris met the notorious Texas prosecution psychiatrist, Dr. James Grigson, who routinely testified that capital defendants — including the innocent Mr. Adams — posed a risk of future…
Issues
Mar 09, 2017
LAW REVIEWS: Predictions of Future Dangerousness Contribute to Arbitrary Sentencing Decisions
In a new article for the Lewis & Clark Law Review, author Carla Edmondson argues that the future dangerousness inquiry that is implicit in capital setencing determinations “is a fundamentally flawed question that leads to arbitrary and capricious death sentences” and because of the “persistent influence of future dangerousness … renders the death penalty incompatible with the prohibitions of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments on cruel and unusual…
Issues
Feb 22, 2017
Supreme Court Grants Relief to Duane Buck in Texas Racial Bias Death Penalty Case
Saying that the “law punishes people for what they do, not who they are,” the Supreme Court on February 22, 2017, granted relief to Duane Buck (pictured, right), a Texas death-row prisoner who was sentenced to death after his own lawyer presented testimony from a psychologist who told the jury Buck was more likely to commit future acts of violence because he is black. Writing for the six-Justice majority, Chief Justice Roberts (pictured,…
Issues
Dec 08, 2016
Experts Say Texas’ Future Dangerousness Concept Is Based on Junk Science
Since 1973, juries in Texas have had to determine whether a defendant presents a future danger to society before imposing a death sentence. But while they have found that each of the 244 men and women currently on the state’s death row poses “a continuing threat to society,” experts argue that juries cannot accurately predict a defendant’s…
Issues
Sep 14, 2016
New Podcast: Jeffery Wood and the Texas Law of Parties, With Expert Guest Kate Black
Today, DPIC launches a new podcast series, “Discussions With DPIC,” which will feature monthly, unscripted conversations with death penalty experts on a wide variety of topics. The inaugural episode features a conversation between Texas Defender Services staff attorney Kate Black (pictured) and DPIC host Anne Holsinger, who discuss the case of Jeffery Wood and Texas’ unusual legal doctrine known as the “law of…
Research
Sep 14, 2016
Jeffrey Wood and the Texas Law of Parties
Today, DPIC launches a new podcast series, “Discussions With DPIC,” which will feature monthly, unscripted conversations with death penalty experts on a wide variety of topics. The inaugural episode features a conversation between Texas Defender Services staff attorney Kate Black and DPIC host Anne Holsinger, who discuss the case of Jeffrey Wood and Texas’ unusual legal doctrine known as the “law of parties.” Wood’s case garnered national media attention because he was sentenced to death…
Issues
New Voices
,Aug 19, 2016
Diverse Range of Voices Call for Sparing Jeff Wood, Who Never Killed Anyone, from Execution in Texas
As his August 24 execution date approaches, Jeffrey Wood’s case has garnered mounting attention from groups and individuals calling on the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Greg Abbott to commute Wood’s sentence. These diverse voices include a conservative Texas state representative, a group of evangelical leaders, and the editorial boards of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and several Texas newspapers, among…
Issues
Aug 04, 2016
Texas Prisoner Who Did Not Kill Anyone Challenges Execution, Use of False Psychiatrist Testimony to Condemn Him to Die
Lawyers for Jeffery Wood (pictured), a Texas death row prisoner who is scheduled to be executed August 24 despite undisputed evidence that he has never killed anyone, have filed a new petition in state court challenging his death sentence on multiple grounds. They argue that Wood cannot be subject to the death penalty because he neither killed nor intended for anyone to be killed and was not even aware the robbery in which a codefendant killed a store clerk…
Issues
Jun 06, 2016
Supreme Court To Hear Texas Death Penalty Cases Dealing with Racial Bias, Intellectual Disability
On June 6, the U.S. Supreme Court granted writs of certiorari in two Texas death penalty cases, and will review the constitutionality of those death sentences during its next term. The two cases are Buck v. Stephens, in which Duane Buck was sentenced to death after a psychologist testified at his penalty trial that the fact that Buck is African-American increases the likelihood that he presents a future danger to society; and…
Issues
Jun 02, 2016
U.S. Supreme Court Reverses Arizona Death Sentence After Jury Not Told of Defendant’s Ineligibility for Parole
The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned a death sentence imposed on Shawn Patrick Lynch by an Arizona jury that had not been told he would have been ineligible for parole if jurors sentenced to him to life imprisonment. In a 6 – 2 decision on May 31, the Court agreed to review Lynch’s case, vacated the judgment of the Arizona Supreme Court, and summarily reversed Lynch’s death…
Issues
Apr 15, 2016
Supreme Court to Consider Hearing Texas Capital Case Where Expert Said Defendant Posed Greater Danger Because He Was Black
UPDATE: The Supreme Court docket indicates that its conferencing of Mr. Buck’s case, originally set for April 22, has been rescheduled. The Court is now scheduled to considering the case on April 29. PREVIOUSLY: On April 22, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to confer on whether to review the case of Duane Buck (pictured), who was sentenced to death in Harris County, Texas after a psychologist testified that he posed an increased risk of future…
Issues
Feb 11, 2016
Texas Prisoner Seeks Supreme Court Review of Death Sentence Tainted By Racial Bias
Duane Buck, who was sentenced to death after a defense expert witness testified that Buck could pose a future danger to society because he is black, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to grant him a new sentencing hearing because of his lawyer’s ineffectiveness. Buck is one of six defendants whose Texas capital trials were identified by a Texas Attorney General’s report as having been tainted by race-based testimony by psychologist, Dr. Walter…
Issues
Aug 27, 2015
Federal Court Rejects Duane Buck Racial Bias Appeal
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected an appeal in the case of Texas death row inmate Duane Buck, who argued that his trial was tainted by ineffective representation and racial bias when Buck’s own mental health expert testified that he could be a future danger to society because he is…
Issues
Nov 20, 2013
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Denies New Hearing for Duane Buck
In a 6 – 3 decision on November 20, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied a request from death row inmate Duane Buck for a new sentencing hearing, despite the fact that racially prejudicial statements had been made during his trial. While the jury was being asked to consider if Buck would be a future danger to society, a psychologist testified that African Americans commit a disproportionate number of criminal offenses. Buck’s case was one of…
Issues
Sep 18, 2013
STUDIES: ABA Criticizes Texas Death Penalty in Latest Report
On September 18, the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Due Process Review Project released its latest report, focusing on the fairness and accuracy of Texas’s death penalty system. The report found: “In many areas, Texas appears out of step with better practices implemented in other capital jurisdictions, fails to rely upon scientifically reliable methods and processes in the administration of the death penalty, and provides the public with inadequate…
Issues
Mar 14, 2013
RACE: New Study Shows Racial Bias in Seeking the Death Penalty in Harris County
A new study regarding the use of the death penalty in Harris County, Texas, was released in conjunction with the filing of an appeal by Harris County death row inmate, Duane Buck. The research was conducted by Professor Raymond Paternoster of the University of Maryland, who examined over 500 murder cases in the county. The study found that, in cases with circumstances similar to Buck’s and during the time in which he was tried, the Harris County District…
Issues
New Voices
,Dec 28, 2011
NEW VOICES: Texas Judge Rules State Death Penalty Unconstitutional
On December 19, Dallas District Court Judge Teresa Hawthorne held that Texas’s death penalty was unconstitutional because it could lead to death sentences that were arbitrarily sought and obtained. In ruling in favor of a defense motion, Judge Hawthorne acknowledged that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and other courts have upheld the statute, but judges still have the obligation to review the law based on its current practice. The judge found parts of Texas’s statute…
Issues
Nov 08, 2011
U.S. Supreme Court Allows Racially Biased Testimony to Stand in Texas Case; Restores Capital Conviction in Ohio
On November 7, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant review to Texas inmate Duane Buck. Buck sought a new sentencing trial because of testimony suggesting he posed a greater danger to society because he is black. During his trial, psychologist Dr. Walter Quijano told the court that Buck’s race increased the likelihood of his future dangerousness. Three of the Justices on the Court (Alito, Scalia and Breyer), which had granted Buck a stay…
Issues
Sep 02, 2011
Only Texas Inmate Not Resentenced After Admittedly Racially Biased Testimony Faces Execution
Texas inmate Duane Buck (pictured) is one of seven death row inmates whose death sentences were tainted by improper racial testimony presented at their trials. In 2000, then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn (now Senator) confessed the state’s error to the U.S. Supreme Court, noting that seven cases had been tainted by improper prosecution testimony. “It is inappropriate to allow race to be considered as a factor in our criminal justice…
Issues
Oct 21, 2010
Expert Who Predicted “Future Dangerousness” in Texas Death Cases Ruled Unreliable
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals recently held that the methodology used by Dr. Richard Coons to predict the “future dangerousness” of capital defendants was unreliable. Whether a convicted defendant would be a future danger to society is a crucial question for juries in Texas in choosing between a life or death sentence. Dr. Coons has testified in over 150 death penalty trials across the state. He admitted in a recent hearing that he had developed his own…
Issues
Aug 31, 2009
INNOCENCE: “Trial by Fire: Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?”
In a thorough and penetrating article published in The New Yorker on August 31, David Grann offers further evidence that Texas probably executed an innocent man in 2004. Grann carefully examines all the evidence that was used in the two-day trial in 1992 to convict Cameron Todd Willingham of murder by arson of his three young children. It is now well established through a series of investigations by other fire experts that the…
Aug 20, 2004
Broad Spectrum of Citizens Seeks Clemency in Upcoming Texas Execution
A broad spectrum of the public is seeking clemency for Texas death row inmate James Allridge, who is scheduled to be executed on Thursday, August 26th. Among those pointing to Allridge’s rehabilitation as the basis for mercy are four of the original jurors in his trial, two former death row prison guards, a retired prison system administrator, a Fort Worth city councilman, one of Allridge’s former employers, and murder victims’ family members. The supporters state that since Aldridge…
Jun 17, 2004
EDITORIALS: Dallas Morning News Says Texas’ Statute is “Wrong and Should Not Stand”
A recent Dallas Morning News editorial decried the use of expert witnesses who claim to have the ability to predict future dangerousness, a determination that jurors in Texas heavily rely on in sentencing people to death. The editorial states: In Texas, we execute criminals not for what they did, but for what they might do. Convicted murderer David Harris has a date with the executioner June 30 for having killed a man in a Beaumont gunfight. But that’s not enough to get Mr. Harris, or any…
Issues
Jun 16, 2004
Texas Relies on “Junk Science” in Choosing Who Will Be Sentenced to Death
Texas plans to execute David Harris on June 30th on the basis of a prediction in 1986 that he would be a future danger even if sentenced to life in prison. Dr. Edward Gripon testified that Harris posed a substantial risk of committing further violent acts, even though Gripon had never met or examined Harris. During his nearly two decades on death row, Harris has had only minor infractions, such as having too many postage stamps or hanging a clothesline in his…
Mar 31, 2004
New Study from Texas Defender Service
NEW STUDY BY TEXAS DEFENDER SERVICE Read Deadly Speculation — Misleading Texas Capital Juries with False Predictions of Future Dangerousness (PDF), a new report from the Texas Defender Service about the unreliability of future dangerousness predictions in Texas death penalty cases. Such speculative testimony is the key factor in who receives the death penalty in Texas. Among those predicted to be a future danger was Randall Dale Adams, who was later found…
Mar 31, 2004
New Study Points to Unreliability of Future Dangerousness Predictions in Texas
A new study conducted by the Texas Defender Service and Professor John Edens of Sam Houston State University found that state predictions of the future dangerousness of capital defendants were grossly inaccurate. The review examined the cases of 155 inmates in which prosecution expert witnesses had predicted the inmate would be a future danger to society and in which the state asked for the death penalty. However, only 8 (5%) of these inmates later engaged in any seriously assaultive behavior…
Issues
Dec 31, 2000
A State of Denial: Texas Justice and the Death Penalty
The nation is embroiled in a debate over the death penalty. Each day brings fresh accounts of racial bias, incompetent counsel, and misconduct committed by police officers or prosecutors in capital cases. The public increasingly questions whether the ultimate penalty can be administered fairly — free from the taint of racism; free from the disgrace of counsel sleeping through a client’s trial; free from the risk of executing an innocent person. Support for the death penalty is falling, and…