Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

A group of conservative leaders has joined in an effort to save the life of Scott Panetti, a Texas death row inmate with a history of severe mental illness. Members include several law enforcement officials and notable conservatives, such as Mark Earley — former Attorney General of Virginia, Harold Stratten — former Attorney General of New Mexico, David Keene — the Washington Times opinion editor, James Miller III — director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan; and…

A new book by Prof. Jeffrey Kirchmeier of the City University of New York examines the recent history of race and the death penalty in the U.S. The book uses the story of a Georgia death row inmate named Warren McCleskey, whose challenge to the state’s death penalty went all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1987 the Court held (5 – 4) that his statistical evidence showing that Georgia’s system of capital punishment was applied in a racially disproportionate way was insufficient to overturn his…

Trial preparations in the death penalty prosecution of James Holmes in Colorado have already cost the state about $5.5 million, and the trial and likely appeals will add significantly more. Holmes is accused of the mass shooting in a movie theater in Aurora. Most of the costs — $4.5 million — have come from the salaries of personnel working on the case, including the prosecutors, defense attorneys, the judge, investigators, and victims’ advocates. Additional court security for hearings in the…

Even as executions have declined in the U.S., those being carried out often illustrate serious problems that have plagued the death penalty for many years. Of the six executions January, two (in Florida and Oklahoma) involved a lethal injection protocol that is now under review by the U.S. Supreme Court. Georgia executed Andrew Brannan, a decorated Vietnam War veteran with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Warren Hill, an inmate who was found intellectually disabled by state doctors, but who…

A recent law review article reported wide variations among states in exempting defendants with intellectual disability from the death penalty. Professor John Blume (l.) of Cornell Law School, along with three co-authors, analyzed claims filed under the Supreme Court’s decision in Atkins v. Virginia (2002) against executing defendants with intellectual disability (formerly, “mental retardation”). Overall, from 2002 through 2013, only about 7.7% (371) of death row inmates or capital defendants…

In light of the three botched executions that took place in 2014, the Washington Post published an editorial urging states not to drop “a veil of secrecy over executions.” In particular, the editorial board opposes a proposed law in Virginia, which, “would make practically everything about executions in Virginia a state secret — even the building in which they take place. ” “It’s hard to see the compelling need for that kind of blatant censorship, which in other states has been challenged by…

Seattle’s Mayor Ed Murray, all 9 members of the Seattle City Council, and City Attorney Pete Holmes signed a letter in support of a bi-partisan bill to abolish the death penalty in Washington. Tim Burgess (l.), the President of the City Council, is a former police officer and detective. The joint letter said: “There is no credible evidence showing that the death penalty deters homicide or makes our communities safer. Instead, pursuing capital punishment diverts precious resources from critical…

According to a new study principally authored by Prof. Frank Baumgartner of the University of North Carolina, the death penalty is far more likely to be used if the underlying murder victim was white rather than black. The study examined every U.S. execution from 1976 – 2013 and found, “The single most reliable predictor of whether a defendant in the United States will be executed is the race of the victim…. Capital punishment is very rarely used where the victim is a Black male, despite the fact…

In a discussion at the University of Florida Law School, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said that recent research reveals that Texas almost certainly executed an innocent man in 1989. Stevens said, “Within the last year, Jim Liebman, who’s a professor at the Columbia Law School and was a former law clerk of mine, has written a book…called The Wrong Carlos…He has demonstrated, I think, beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a Texas case in which they executed the wrong…

On January 23 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to Oklahoma’s lethal injection procedures, particularly its use of midazolam that was used in three botched executions in 2014. Four Oklahoma inmates asked the Court to review the state’s procedures, but one of them, Charles Warner, was executed before the Court agreed to take the case. It is likely the other three defendants will be granted stays. When Warner was executed, Justice Sotomayor along with three other Justices…