Even as death penalty cases continue to absorb tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, state budget cuts are affecting courts, public defenders,and district attorney's offices across the country, raising concerns about delays and inadequate representation. Reduced budgets are impacting all aspects of the court system, including civil and criminal cases, and delaying death penalty cases. Prosecutors are forced to ignore some violations, judges are delaying trials, and in some cases, those charged with violent crimes have been set free because speedy trial requirements can't be met. "It's extremely frustrating," said Scott Burns of the National District Attorneys Association. "Frankly, the people that do these jobs have a lot of passion. They don't do these jobs for the money. They are in America's courtrooms every day to protect victims and do justice. And they're rewarded with terminations, furloughs and cuts in pay." On the defense side, in the last three years, Georgia has cut funding for the Georgia Resource Center, which represents indigent death penalty defendants in post-conviction proceedings, by $250,000, forcing the center to reduce its staff. "We've been running on a shoestring for years and we are minimally available to take care of all the guys on death row," said Brian Kammer, the center's executive director. "But with this kind of funding loss, we're getting crippled."
An editorial in the New York Times criticized a recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, upholding the heavy burden Georgia places on offenders with intellectual disabilities. In order to be exempt from the death penalty, defendants must prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that they are mentally retarded. The U.S. Supreme Court held in 2002 that such defendants cannot receive the death penalty, but the Court left the procedures for determining this status to the states. According to the editorial, Georgia is the only state requiring this extremely difficult standard of proof. They called on the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down Georgia's law. The editorial concluded, “[W]hen the court ruled that the Eighth Amendment prohibits execution of the mentally retarded, it made plain that states cannot weaken that protection with an unfair procedural standard. In this and other ways, Georgia’s death penalty subverts the Constitution and is further evidence that capital punishment should be abolished.” Read full editorial below.
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John Garvey (pictured), president of the Catholic University of America, recently discussed the evolution of Catholic teaching on capital punishment. Garvey said that while early Catholic Church leaders supported the use of the death penalty, the prevailing contemporary teaching on the subject clearly calls for "condemnation of executions." Reflecting on the recent executions of Lawrence Brewer in Texas and Troy Davis in Georgia, Garvey wrote, “The church’s clear contemporary teaching is that Texas and Georgia should do so only if it was necessary to protect their people from further attacks. Given the quality of the state prison systems, it’s hard to make that claim.” Garvey stated that the Church urges Catholics to resist the urge to seek revenge: “The reason isn’t just that we might make a mistake, though we might. The reason is that human life is sacred because it results from the creative action of God. It is not our place to destroy it, though that might satisfy our desire for revenge.” Read full op-ed below. 
Dr. Allen Ault (pictured), a retired Georgia prison warden, recently appeared on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show, discussing the effects of carrying out executions on prison workers. Dr. Ault was one of six retired prison wardens who had urged Georgia corrections officials and Governor Nathan Deal to do what they could to halt the execution of Troy Davis. Davis was executed on September 21, 2011. Dr. Ault discussed the difficult questions prison officials face when participating in an execution. He said, "You're killing somebody. And there`s no denying that. And especially when we know that several people have been declared innocent with the new scientific techniques, and we're not real sure if the individual we're executing this evening or next week is really guilty - that in itself, that kind of doubt. The other thing most of us know [is] all the research which indicates that capital punishment does not deter... it seems so illogical to say to the public we do not want you to kill, and to demonstrate that, we're going to kill individuals." Dr. Ault also recounted his experience with victims' family members after an execution: "In every execution that I attended, I spent time with the victim's family. And most of the victims' families that I talked with, they thought they were going to get a lot of relief or closure from the execution. And in most cases, they did not."
A recent article by Alec Baldwin (pictured) in the Huffington Post offered the actor's reflections on the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia. Baldwin said that his position on the death penalty "has little to do with opposition to any 'eye for an eye' sentiments," but instead, "It has to do specifically with the misapplication of the death penalty in terms of race, in terms of the potency of court-appointed counsel and in terms of the admission of DNA evidence in cases where tragically slipshod work by police and prosecutors is undone by modern technology." Baldwin said that concern for wrongful executions was a significant reason that led to his opposition of capital punishment, even though some crimes evoked an emotional desire for executing the offender. He concluded, "The death penalty costs us a lot money. . . . The death penalty costs us more money than it costs to house an inmate for life. We don't want to kill innocent people. And we don't need to kill the guilty ones either." Read full text below.