Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The lethal injec­tion of Dennis McGuire in Ohio in January​“was not a humane exe­cu­tion,” accord­ing to Dr. Kent Dively (pic­tured), a San Diego anes­the­si­ol­o­gist who exam­ined records relat­ed to the exe­cu­tion, which took near­ly 30 min­utes to com­plete. Dr. Dively made the state­ment in an affi­davit relat­ed to a civ­il rights suit filed by McGuire’s chil­dren. McGuire was the first per­son in the coun­try to be executed using…

A new report from The Death Penalty Project,​“The Inevitability of Error,” exam­ines the risk of wrong­ful con­vic­tions in cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions through case stud­ies from around the world. The report ana­lyzes recent inno­cence cas­es in Japan, the U.S., Taiwan, and Sierra Leone, as well as old­er cas­es from the United Kingdom that encour­aged abo­li­tion efforts there. Among the cas­es includ­ed are those of Iwao Hakamada, who was released after…

On August 8 U.S. District Judge Gregory L. Frost ruled that no exe­cu­tions may be car­ried out in Ohio until at least January 2015. The court’s rul­ing length­ened a pre­vi­ous mora­to­ri­um imposed because of prob­lems with the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. Judge Frost said he extend­ed the stay of exe­cu­tions​“in light of the con­tin­u­ing need for dis­cov­ery and nec­es­sary prepa­ra­tions relat­ed to the adop­tion and imple­men­ta­tion of the…

A new­ly pub­lished study by Professor John Donohue of Stanford Law School found that arbi­trary fac­tors, includ­ing race and geog­ra­phy, sig­nif­i­cant­ly affect­ed death sen­tenc­ing deci­sions in Connecticut. While con­trol­ling for a vari­ety of fac­tors relat­ed to the sever­i­ty of the crime, the study’s abstract indi­cat­ed that “[M]inority defen­dants who kill white vic­tims are cap­i­tal­ly charged at sub­stan­tial­ly high­er rates than minority…

Dr. Marc Stern, the for­mer assis­tant sec­re­tary of health­care for the Washington Department of Corrections, recent­ly com­ment­ed on physi­cian par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­tions in the wake of the botched lethal injec­tions in Oklahoma and Arizona. Dr. Stern resigned rather than coop­er­ate with his state’s exe­cu­tion plan. He explained his views,​“Although its foun­da­tion is in med­ical sci­ence, lethal injection is…

A joint com­mit­tee of 32 sen­a­tors and rep­re­sen­ta­tives held the first pub­lic hear­ing on Kentucky​’s death penal­ty since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed there in 1975. The hear­ing was prompt­ed by a death penal­ty repeal bill pro­posed by Republican Rep. David Floyd, who said the death penal­ty should be end­ed because of the cost and time it takes for cas­es to com­plete the appeals process. He was also con­cerned about the num­ber of death…

On August 1, the Arizona Department of Corrections (DOC) released 330 pages of doc­u­ments relat­ed to the exe­cu­tion of Joseph Wood on July 23. Although not a report on why the exe­cu­tion took near­ly 2 hours to com­plete, the doc­u­ments reveal that Wood was inject­ed with 15 con­sec­u­tive dos­es (50 mg each) of mida­zo­lam and hydro­mor­phone, far more than indi­cat­ed in the state’s…

Cameron Todd Willingham was exe­cut­ed in Texas in 2004. His con­vic­tion was based large­ly on foren­sic evi­dence of arson that both pros­e­cu­tors and defense attor­neys now agree was seri­ous­ly flawed. Prosecutors have main­tained that oth­er evi­dence point­ed towards Willingham’s guilt, espe­cial­ly the tes­ti­mo­ny of a jail­house infor­mant who said Willingham con­fessed to the crime of mur­der­ing his chil­dren. Now accord­ing to an investigative…

On July 31, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder spoke about the death penal­ty review under­way at the Department of Justice and the need for greater trans­paren­cy in lethal injec­tion meth­ods. Holder said he was​“great­ly trou­bled” by the recent botched exe­cu­tions, adding that states should pro­vide more infor­ma­tion about the drugs they plan to use. He said, “[F]or the state to exer­cise that great­est of all pow­ers, to end a human life, it seems to…

A new study by Prof. Meredith Martin Rountree of Northwestern University Law School exam­ined the char­ac­ter­is­tics of Texas death row inmates who waived all or part of their nor­mal appeals, thus has­ten­ing their exe­cu­tion. Referring to these inmates as​“vol­un­teers,” she com­pared them with sim­i­lar­­­ly-sit­u­at­ed inmates who did not waive their appeals. She found that more vol­un­teers expe­ri­enced depres­sion or had attempt­ed suicide than…