Entries by Death Penalty Information Center


News 

Oct 302015

STUDIES: FBI Crime Report Shows Murder Rates Remain Higher in Death Penalty States

The U.S. Department of Justice released its annu­al FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2014, report­ing no change in the nation­al mur­der rate since 2013. In the Northeast, the region with the fewest exe­cu­tions, the mur­der rate declined 5.7%, from 3.5 to 3.3 per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion. The mur­der rate was 1.7 times high­er in the South, which car­ries out the most exe­cu­tions of any region. That region saw a 3.4% increase in the homi­cide rate, and…

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News 

Oct 292015

Amid Threatening Comments by Current DA, Death Penalty Dominates Caddo Parish Prosecutor Election

Capital pun­ish­ment is dom­i­nat­ing the dis­cus­sion in the runoff elec­tion between James E. Stewart, Sr. and Dhu Thompson to suc­ceed act­ing Caddo Parish, Louisiana District Attorney Dale Cox. Cox’s con­tro­ver­sial state­ments about the death penal­ty — includ­ing that the state needs to​“kill more peo­ple” — have focused nation­al atten­tion on the parish, which ranks among the two per­cent of U.S. coun­ties respon­si­ble for 56 per­cent of the…

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News 

Oct 282015

Pennsylvania Death-Row Prisoners Disproportionately Represented at Trial by Attorneys with Disciplinary Problems

15.1% of cap­i­tal defen­dants sen­tenced to death in Pennsylvania since 1980 were rep­re­sent­ed at tri­al by a lawyer who has been dis­ci­plined for pro­fes­sion­al mis­con­duct, and that has risen to 18.2% in the past decade, accord­ing to an inves­tiga­tive report by The Reading Eagle. These rates of dis­ci­pline were between 5 and 6 times high­er than the 3% dis­ci­pli­nary rate for Pennsylvania lawyers as a whole over the past 30 years. The disciplinary…

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News 

Oct 262015

President Obama Calls Death Penalty Deeply Troubling”

In an inter­view with Bill Keller of The Marshall Project, President Obama said the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty is​“deeply trou­bling,” and ques­tioned the man­ner in which cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is applied in the United States. While the President said that he is not opposed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment​“in the­o­ry,” he expressed con­cern about issues includ­ing racial bias, wrong­ful con­vic­tions, and botched exe­cu­tions.​“We know, statistically,…

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News 

Oct 232015

Arizona, Texas Attempted to Import Illegal Lethal Injection Drugs Linked to Indian Supplier with Troubling History

Arizona and Texas attempt­ed to import lethal injec­tion drugs in vio­la­tion of fed­er­al law, but the ship­ments were halt­ed by U.S. Food and Drug Administration offi­cials in late July, accord­ing to reports by The Arizona Republic and Buzzfeed. The Republic reports that the Arizona Department of Corrections paid $27,000 for sodi­um thiopen­tal for use in exe­cu­tions, but the ship­ment was halt­ed at the Phoenix airport by…

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News 

Oct 222015

New Position of National Association of Evangelicals Shows Cracks in Death Penalty Support

Recognizing that​“a grow­ing num­ber of evan­gel­i­cals now call” for a shift away from the death penal­ty, the National Association of Evangelicals — an umbrel­la group for con­gre­ga­tions rep­re­sent­ing mil­lions of evan­gel­i­cal Christians in the United States — has backed away from its pri­or strong sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. A new­ly adopt­ed NAE res­o­lu­tion states,​“Evangelical Christians dif­fer in their beliefs about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, often citing strong…

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News 

Oct 212015

STUDIES: Explaining Virginia’s Disappearing Death Penalty

A new study by University of Virginia law pro­fes­sor Brandon Garrett (pic­tured) shows a dra­mat­ic decline in the death penal­ty in Virginia over the last decade. Virginia has car­ried out the third high­est num­ber of exe­cu­tions since the 1970s and his­tor­i­cal­ly has exe­cut­ed a high­er per­cent­age of its death-row pris­on­ers than any oth­er state. However, Garrett said there are now few­er than two cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing tri­als per year and Virginia juries have…

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News 

Oct 202015

Ohio Postpones Executions Due to Lack of Lethal Injection Drugs

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction announced on October 19 that the state was post­pon­ing all exe­cu­tions until at least 2017 because it has been unable to obtain the lethal injec­tion drugs nec­es­sary to car­ry them out. Governor John Kasich issued war­rants of reprieve resched­ul­ing the exe­cu­tions of 11 death-row pris­on­ers with exe­cu­tion dates in 2016 and a 12th with a January 2017 exe­cu­tion date. Ohio resched­uled the exe­cu­tions for dates in…

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News 

Oct 192015

Former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Seeks Ban on Death Penalty for Severely Mentally Ill Defendants

Former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton (pic­tured) tes­ti­fied in state leg­isla­tive hear­ings on October 14 that Ohio should ban use of the death penal­ty against defen­dants who suf­fer from seri­ous men­tal ill­ness when they com­mit a cap­i­tal crime. Stratton, a Republican who was appoint­ed to the court in 1996 and served, fol­low­ing reelec­tion, until 2012, called the death penal­ty​“inef­fi­cient, inef­fec­tive and a great bur­den on our…

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