Welsh White

A memorial service for Welsh White, Bessie McKee Walthour Endowed Chair and professor in Pitt’s School of Law, will be held at 3 p.m. Jan. 20 in the University’s Heinz Chapel. A reception in the Barco Law Building will follow.

White, 65, a leading national authority on the death penalty, died Dec. 31. Since joining Pitt’s law faculty in 1968, he had taught such courses here as criminal law, criminal procedure, and evidence.

White was the author of three books on capital punishment, among them The Death Penalty in the Nineties: An Examination of the Modern System of Capital Punishment (University of Michigan Press, 1991), as well as numerous essays and scholarly articles on evidence and criminal procedure.

White spent the last 10 years studying police interrogations and confessions. In his book Miranda’s Waning Protections: Police Interrogation Practices after Dickerson (University of Michigan Press, 2001), White examined Miranda v. Arizona—the 1966 U.S. Supreme Court case that established rights of suspects upon arrest—and other Supreme Court confession cases, emphasizing the conflict between law enforcement and civil liberties. He had recently completed work on a new book, Litigating in the Shadow of Death: Defense Attorneys in Capital Cases, which will be published by the University of Michigan Press early in 2006.