Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

A spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor in Harris County, Texas, has filed a com­plaint with the Texas State Bar Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel against for­mer Assistant District Attorney Daniel Rizzo, alleg­ing that Rizzo inten­tion­al­ly con­cealed excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence cru­cial to the exon­er­a­tion of for­mer death-row pris­on­er Alfred Dewayne Brown (pic­tured). Brown was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 2005 for a rob­bery mur­der in which a store clerk…

A study of tax rates and crime rates in Texas coun­ties has found that death-penal­­ty tri­als con­tribute to high­er prop­er­ty tax rates and increased rates of prop­er­ty crime. Alex Lundberg (pic­tured), an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of Economics at West Virginia University, ana­lyzed bud­getary and crime rate data from Texas coun­ties and found that coun­ties respond­ed to the high cost bur­den of cap­i­tal tri­als by rais­ing prop­er­ty tax­es and reducing public…

One year after a state task force issued a report call­ing Pennsylvania’s death penal­ty seri­ous­ly flawed and in need of major reform, bipar­ti­san oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is sur­fac­ing in the Commonwealth’s leg­is­la­ture. A group of leg­is­la­tors, led by Lebanon County Republican State Rep. Frank Ryan (pic­tured, left) and Philadelphia Democrat Chris Rabb (pic­tured, right), have pre­pared leg­is­la­tion to repeal Pennsylvania’s death penal­ty and are cir­cu­lat­ing the proposal for…

Four years after the racial­ly moti­vat­ed mur­ders of nine African-American parish­ioners at the his­toric Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17, 2015, a new book by Charleston Post and Courier reporter Jennifer Berry Hawes explores the after­math of the killings and the extra­or­di­nary nar­ra­tive of grace and for­give­ness it pro­duced. As a reporter for the Post and Courier, Hawes covered…

An Alabama woman who may have been raped by guards has giv­en birth after being impreg­nat­ed in the Coosa County jail while await­ing tri­al on cap­i­tal mur­der charges. LaToni Daniel (pic­tured), an hon­or­ably dis­charged Army National Guard vet­er­an who has been in pre­tri­al cus­tody with­out bail for more than sev­en­teen months, had been pre­scribed seda­tives in the prison for a sup­posed seizure dis­or­der, and the med­ica­tion pro­longed her sleep. She first…

In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released a land­mark report titled Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward, in which it raised sig­nif­i­cant ques­tions about the valid­i­ty of every foren­sic sci­ence dis­ci­pline except DNA analy­sis. The report concluded, ​“no foren­sic method has been rig­or­ous­ly shown to have the capac­i­ty to con­sis­tent­ly, and with a high degree of cer­tain­ty, demon­strate a con­nec­tion between evi­dence and a spe­cif­ic indi­vid­ual or source.” In a…

Aramis Ayala (pic­tured), the first African American elect­ed as a state attor­ney in Florida, will not seek re-elec­­tion as Orange-Osceola County State Attorney. Citing con­flicts with the Florida Supreme Court’s pro­nounce­ments on cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions, Ayala announced in a Facebook video on May 28, 2019 that she would not pur­sue a sec­ond term as state attorney. ​“It’s time for me to move for­ward and to con­tin­ue the pur­suit of jus­tice in a…

Overriding a veto by Governor Chris Sununu, the New Hampshire leg­is­la­ture has repealed the state’s death-penal­­ty statute. With a 16 – 8 super­ma­jor­i­ty, the May 30, 2019 vote of the New Hampshire Senate equaled the two-thirds required to over­ride a guber­na­to­r­i­al veto. One week ear­li­er, the state House had vot­ed to over­ride with a 247 – 123 super­ma­jor­i­ty. The over­ride vote made New Hampshire the 21^st state to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and the ninth to do so in the last 15 years.

Harold Wilson, exon­er­at­ed in 2005 six­teen years after his wrong­ful con­vic­tion and death sen­tence for a triple mur­der in a Philadelphia crack house, has died. He had recent­ly suf­fered a series of strokes that were fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by pneu­mo­nia. His risk of stroke and the com­pli­ca­tions that fol­lowed had been wors­ened by the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder he devel­oped as a result of the 17 years he faced the death penal­ty, most spent in soli­tary confinement on…

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…