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 just before his scheduled execution on September 15, said his case was different from other similar cases where relief was granted because it was Buck’s defense attorney who was responsible for eliciting the offensive testimony. Justices Sotomayor and Kagan dissented, stating, “Today the court denies review of a death sentence marred by racial overtones. . . . Buck did not argue that his race made him less dangerous, and the prosecutor had no need to revisit the issue. But she did, in a question specifically designed to persuade the jury that Buck’s race made him more dangerous and that, in part on this basis, he should be sentenced to death.” (See more on this case below.)
On the same day, the Supreme Court reinstated the death sentence of Archie Dixon in Ohio. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned Dixon’s conviction after finding that his confession to a murder was invalid due to police coercion. The Court granted certiorari and reversed this decision, noting that federal courts must give great deference to state court findings, and writing in an unsigned opinion that "there is no evidence that any of Dixon's statements was the product of actual coercion." (Bobby v. Dixon, No.10-1540).
Bob Van Steenburg (pictured), served for 27 years in the military and retired as a United States Army Colonel in 1991. He currently serves as the President of the Board of Directors of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. On Veterans Day, he reflected on how his opposition to the death penalty grew from his commitments as a soldier. He wrote, “
The Texas Forensic Science Commission recently closed its inquiry into the case of Cameron Todd Willingham (pictured), who was executed in Texas in 2004. The Commission was told by the Texas Attorney General that it did not have jurisdiction to rule on the Willingham case. Hence, in its final report on October 28 on the matter, it declined to issue any finding regarding allegations of negligence or misconduct by the City of Corsicana or the Texas State Fire Marshal in the Willingham matter. The Commission, however, acknowledged that outdated science regarding arsons played a role in Willingham’s 1991 murder conviction. Willingham was convicted of setting the fire that killed his three daughters. Since then, modern fire experts have determined that none of the more than 20 arson indicators identified by the standards of arson science in 1991 are reliable evidence of intentional fire. Experts say that the cause of fire should have been "undetermined." Stephen Saloom, policy director for the Innocence Project in New York, said, "The world should now know that the evidence relied upon to convict and execute Cameron Todd Willingham for the fire that killed his daughters was based on scientifically invalid and unreliable evidence.” The Commission’s final report also included a commitment from the state fire marshal’s office to review old arson rulings to determine whether convictions were based on the now-debunked science."
In a new documentary, titled Into the Abyss: A Tale of Life, A Tale of Death, renowned documentarian Werner Herzog (pictured) examines the case of a triple homicide in Conroe, Texas, exploring why people kill and why states carry out executions. The film features intimate conversations with many of those involved in the case, including 28-year-old death row inmate Michael Perry, who was executed shortly after his interview with Herzog in 2010. The film also includes interviews with Perry's co-defendant, Jason Burkett, who was given a life sentence; the woman who lost both her mother and brother in the crime; the Texas death row chaplain; and one of the guards who performed executions. Richard Corliss, a reviewer from Time Magazine, commented on "Into the Abyss": “It provides intimate glimpses of people usually seen, and then only briefly, as faces on a post-office wall or numbers in a cemetery. Herzog asks viewers not to agree with his position on the state's right to kill, but to spend some time with folks who would kill, or be killed, for the sake of a red Camaro.” "Into the Abyss" will be released In New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles on November 11, 2011, with a wider release in the following weeks. Among Herzog's other works are his recent "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" (2010) and the award-winning "Grizzly Man." See below for a trailer to the film.
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. 
William Sessions (pictured), the former Director of the FBI, and Mark White, former Governor of Texas, called on Texas to delay the November 9 execution of Hank Skinner and allow access to untested DNA evidence. Skinner, who has always maintained his innocence, has repeatedly petitioned for testing of several items from the crime scene that contain DNA. The items - a windbreaker jacket similar to the one an alternative suspect wore, the victim’s fingernail clippings and human hairs found in the victim’s hands - could conclusively prove the presence of a third party, or could confirm Skinner's guilt. In an op-ed in the Austin American-Statesman, Sessions and White wrote, “We hope the courts' actions will reflect the belief of the majority of Texans that inmates should have access to DNA testing that could prove their innocence. This belief also is shared by more than a dozen current and former elected officials and former judges, prosecutors and law enforcement, who have joined together to urge state officials to test the DNA evidence.” The op-ed continued, “It is unconscionable that the prosecutor refuses to test the available DNA evidence when such testing has the power to confirm the verdict or prove the other suspect's guilt. Testing the evidence is just common sense.” (DPIC Note: On November 3, a Gray County trial court denied without comment Skinner’s request for DNA testing. An appeal is being filed with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.) Read full op-ed below. UPDATE below.
On October 27, a group of former Texas judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officers delivered a letter to Governor Rick Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbott and District Attorney Lynn Switzer requesting DNA tests for death row inmate Hank Skinner. Signatories to the letter include: Mark White, former Governor of Texas (pictured); Morris L. Overstreet, former Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals; Sam Millsap, former Bexar County District Attorney; Kenneth J. Mighell, former United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas; Earl D. Musick, former Lieutenant of the Houston Police Department; and Rodney Ellis, curremt State Senator. Skinner is scheduled to be executed on November 9 despite the fact that key pieces of DNA evidence in his case have never been tested. Skinner has court decisions pending in both federal and state courts, but his execution has not been stayed. The authors of the letter expressed “grave and growing concerns about the State’s stubborn refusal to date to test all the evidence in the Skinner case. Executing Mr. Skinner without testing all the relevant evidence would suggest official indifference to the possibility of error in this case and needlessly undermine public confidence in Texas’s criminal justice system.” The letter concluded, “There is simply no justifiable reason why Texas continues to waste taxpayer dollars in its decade-long fight to prevent scientific testing in Mr. Skinner’s case. We implore you to take the lead in the search for truth in this case. Test the DNA evidence before moving forward with Mr. Skinner’s execution.”
A recent CNN perspective examined the views of those they called "the most unlikely opponents of the death penalty, people who lost loved ones to unspeakable violence yet believe executing the killer will do nothing for family members or society." For example, Ross Byrd, the son of James Byrd, Jr., who was dragged to his death behind a truck in Texas by Lawrence Brewer, nevertheless objected to Brewer's execution, saying "You can't fight murder with murder." In Mississippi, the mother and siblings of James Anderson asked for his killer's life to be spared. In a letter to the district attorney, Barbara Anderson Young, Anderson's sister, cited the family's faith as one of the reasons why they opposed capital punishment. And Charisse Coleman, whose brother Russell (both pictured) was shot in a liquor store in Shreveport, Louisiana, pointed to the fallibility of the system: "The criminal justice [system]," she said, "is created by and conducted by humans. As long as we're capable of making mistakes, we shouldn't be deciding who lives and dies." Her views did not stem from sympathy for the defendant: "My opposition to the death penalty has nothing to do with Bobby Lee Hampton," she said. "He's a bad dude. He's never going to be a good dude. If I got a call that said Bobby Lee Hampton dropped dead in his cell last night, I don't think it would create a ripple in my pond. . . [but] I will [not] let Bobby Lee Hampton make me a victim, too, by taking me down that road of bitterness and revenge."