Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In a continuing diminution of procedural safeguards in capital cases, the Florida Supreme Court has ended its long-standing practice of independently reviewing death penalty cases on appeal to ensure that they are not disproportionate to sentences imposed in similar cases. The practice, known as comparative proportionality review, was initiated by the court a half-century ago after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all existing U.S. death penalty statutes in Furman v. Georgia because of the…

To rein in the social and economic costs caused by the overly aggressive use of the death penalty by prosecutors, a California legal scholar is proposing a plan he believes will reduce miscarriages of justice and increase prosecutorial accountability. In Shrinking the Accountability Deficit in Capital Charging, a new chapter in the 2020 Oxford Handbook of Prosecutors and Prosecution, UCLA law professor Sherod Thaxton (pictured) argues that to temper the unfettered discretion local prosecutors…

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia continues to use the death penalty against people accused of crimes committed as juveniles, despite a royal decree claiming to ban that practice, human rights organizations and defense lawyers have charged. On October 19, 2020, the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights issued a statement saying that thirteen prisoners still faced the death penalty in the kingdom for alleged crimes committed as juveniles. The following day, citing “glaring exceptions” in the…

Calling California capital sentencing proceedings “infected by racism,” Governor Gavin Newsom (pictured) has filed a brief in the California Supreme Court supporting a death-row prisoner’s claim that capital punishment as currently practiced in the state violates the California penal code and the state constitution. In a news release, the Governor’s office said the friend-of-the-court brief, filed on October 26, 2020 in the capital appeal of Don’te Lamont McDaniel, was “the first time in…

Amy Coney Barrett has been confirmed as a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, filling the vacancy created by the death of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Shortly after her confirmation by the U.S. Senate on October 26, 2020, Justice Clarence Thomas administered the oath of office to Barrett in an outdoor ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House. Barrett’s confirmation came just 30 days after her nomination, the shortest period between nomination and confirmation of a…

The leader of the world’s second largest Christian denomination has joined with the Roman Catholic Church in declaring the death penalty fundamentally incompatible with Christian teachings. In an interview with Vatican News on October 20, 2020, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, called opposition to the death penalty “the logical and moral consequence” of adherence to Christian principles of human dignity. The Orthodox patriarch’s…

Prosecutors or police used or threatened to use the death penalty as a coercive tool that led to or extended the wrongful convictions of at least nineteen people who were exonerated in 2019, a Death Penalty Information Center analysis of data from the National Registry of Exonerations has revealed. Nearly 95% of those cases also involved some other form of major misconduct, the DPIC analysis found. DPIC’s special report, Use or Threat of Death Penalty Implicated in 19 Exoneration Cases in…

Expressing the hope “that we’ll be able to celebrate very soon, together with the American people, the abolition of the death penalty in the United States,” European Union Ambassador to the United States Stavros Lambrinidis opened the EU in the USA and Council of the Europe’s virtual commemoration of World and European Day Against the Death Penalty. “Let’s work together to get this done,” Lambrinidis said. As part of the commemoration, the Death Penalty Information Center and Witness to…

A Wyoming woman whose mother and husband were murdered in separate incidents is calling on the state to repeal its death penalty for the benefit of victims’ family members. In an October 17 op-ed in the Casper Star Tribune, Christal Martin (pictured) described the deep emotional trauma caused to family members of murder victims during court proceedings and the inadequacy of support services families receive in the state’s justice system. Contrasting the high costs of the death penalty with the…

In his first interview since his September 24, 2020 exoneration, former Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Flowers (pictured) spoke with In the Dark podcast host and lead reporter Madeleine Baran about his 24-year journey to freedom after having being framed, tried six times, sent to death row and finally freed for a murder everyone involved knew full well he had never committed. In an interview that aired October 14, 2020, Flowers said he survived the ordeal with the unbending support of…