Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In a recent Washington Times op-ed, two for­mer state supreme court chief jus­tices argue that a state supreme court jus­tice who, as dis­trict attor­ney, had autho­rized the cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion of a defen­dant, should not have lat­er par­tic­i­pat­ed as a judge in decid­ing an appeal in that case. Gerald Kogan (pic­tured, l.), for­mer chief jus­tice of the Florida Supreme Court, and Michael Wolff (pic­tured, r.), for­mer chief jus­tice of the Supreme Court of…

Naval vet­er­an Travis Hittson (pic­tured), sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed by Georgia on February 17, has filed an appli­ca­tion for clemen­cy with the State Board of Pardons and Paroles. Hittson assist­ed his supe­ri­or offi­cer, Edward Vollmer, to kill and dis­mem­ber a fel­low sailor, Conway Utterbeck in 1992. Despite evi­dence that Vollmer was the more cul­pa­ble of the two, pros­e­cu­tors per­mit­ted him to plead guilty and receive a life sen­tence from which he…

United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the Court’s most ardent defend­ers of the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, has died at age 79. Appointed to the Court in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan, Justice Scalia vot­ed to uphold the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in a wide vari­ety of cir­cum­stances. He was part of 5 – 4 con­ser­v­a­tive majori­ties in a num­ber of sig­nif­i­cant death penal­ty cas­es, includ­ing the 1987 deci­sions in McCleskey v.

U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford has ordered an evi­den­tiary hear­ing on Donald Fell​’s (pic­tured) chal­lenge to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. In court fil­ings seek­ing to bar fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors from seek­ing death against him in a pend­ing retri­al, Fell has argued that the fed­er­al death penal­ty con­sti­tutes cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment in vio­la­tion of the Fifth and Eighth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Among oth­er grounds, he has asserted that…

Duane Buck, who was sen­tenced to death after a defense expert wit­ness tes­ti­fied that Buck could pose a future dan­ger to soci­ety because he is black, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to grant him a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing because of his lawyer’s inef­fec­tive­ness. Buck is one of six defen­dants whose Texas cap­i­tal tri­als were iden­ti­fied by a Texas Attorney General’s report as hav­ing been taint­ed by race-based tes­ti­mo­ny by psy­chol­o­gist, Dr. Walter…

The dis­ci­pli­nary board of the Texas State Bar reject­ed an appeal on February 9 from Charles Sebesta, the pros­e­cu­tor whose mis­con­duct led to the wrong­ful con­vic­tion of Anthony Graves (pic­tured, r.). The board­’s deci­sion dis­bar­ring Sebesta for what it called ​“egre­gious” mis­con­duct is now final. Anthony Graves was con­vict­ed in 1994 on the false tes­ti­mo­ny of Robert Carter, who claimed Graves was his accom­plice. Graves was exon­er­at­ed in 2010 and filed a complaint…

In the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion strik­ing down Florida​’s death-sen­­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures, a new poll shows that near­ly two thirds of Floridians now pre­fer some form of life sen­tence to the death penal­ty and near­ly three-quar­ters favor requir­ing the jury to unan­i­mous­ly agree on the sen­tence before the death penal­ty can be imposed. The poll by Public Policy Polling found that 62% of respon­dents pre­ferred some form of life in prison over the death penal­ty for convicted…

In her new book, Confronting the Death Penalty: How Language Influences Jurors in Capital Cases, Marshall University Anthropology Professor Robin Conley examines ​“how lan­guage fil­ters, restricts, and at times is used to manip­u­late jurors’ expe­ri­ences while they serve on cap­i­tal tri­als and again when they reflect on them after­ward.” Conley spent fif­teen months in ethno­graph­ic field­work observ­ing four Texas cap­i­tal tri­als and inter­view­ing the jurors involved. She…

As California’s new lethal injec­tion pro­to­col moves the state towards resum­ing exe­cu­tions, Kevin Cooper (pic­tured, left) is seek­ing clemen­cy from Gov. Jerry Brown on the grounds that he is inno­cent. Cooper — one of 18 death-row pris­on­ers who have exhaust­ed their court appeals and face exe­cu­tion — was sen­tenced to death for the 1983 mur­ders of a mar­ried cou­ple, their 10-year-old daugh­ter, and the daugh­ter’s 11-year-old friend. However, evi­dence that was sup­pressed as a result of police and…

Capital cas­es are on hold in Florida and Delaware as their state courts con­sid­er the impact of the recent U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing in Hurst v. Florida. The Hurst deci­sion ruled that Florida’s sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dure was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because a judge, rather than a jury, deter­mined the aggra­vat­ing fac­tors that made a case eli­gi­ble for a death sen­tence. The Florida Supreme Court has already delayed one Florida execution to…