Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

A new study of the cost of the death penal­ty in Colorado revealed that cap­i­tal pro­ceed­ings require six times more days in court and take much longer to resolve than life-with­­out-parole (LWOP) cas­es. The study, pub­lished in the University of Denver Criminal Law Review, found that LWOP cas­es required an aver­age of 24.5 days of in-court time, while the death-penal­­ty cas­es required 147.6 days. The authors not­ed that select­ing a jury in an LWOP case takes about a…

Raoul Cantera (pic­tured), a for­mer Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, said the state should fol­low the prac­tice of almost every oth­er death penal­ty state and require juries to be unan­i­mous when rec­om­mend­ing a death sen­tence. Cantera also said that a a com­pre­hen­sive review of the state’s death penalty is ​“long over­due” and should begin by con­sid­er­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions of a 2006 American Bar Association report on the state’s death penal­ty. Mark…

Anthony Santoro has writ­ten a new book about reli­gious per­spec­tives on the death penal­ty, Exile and Embrace: Contemporary Religious Discourse on the Death Penalty. In describ­ing the book, John D. Bessler, a law pro­fes­sor at the University of Baltimore, said, ​“Santoro tells the sto­ries of every­one from death row chap­lains to blog­gers and Bible study par­tic­i­pants. In dis­cussing trans­gres­sion, ret­ri­bu­tion, and ​‘the oth­er,’ he skill­ful­ly demon­strates how executions say…

A new study test­ing inter­nal atti­tudes and stereo­types among poten­tial jurors in six death penal­ty states may help to explain the racial dis­par­i­ties that per­sist in the appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Researchers Justin Levinson (l.), Robert Smith (r.), and Danielle Young test­ed 445 jury-eli­gi­ble indi­vid­u­als and found they har­bored two kinds of racial bias: they main­tained racial stereo­types about Blacks and Whites and made asso­ci­a­tions between the race of an indi­vid­ual and the value of…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recent­ly held that Texas death row inmate Scott Panetti is sane enough to be exe­cut­ed, despite his long his­to­ry of severe men­tal ill­ness. Panetti was sen­tenced to death for the 1992 mur­der of his in-laws. Putting aside Panetti’s bizarre behav­ior in court, the judge allowed him to rep­re­sent him­self at tri­al, where he wore a pur­ple cow­boy suit and sub­poe­naed Jesus Christ and Anne Bancroft as wit­ness­es. Panetti had…

As Ohio pre­pares to change its exe­cu­tion process in October, the Toledo Blade called on the state to stop the secre­cy sur­round­ing the selec­tion of an alter­na­tive to cur­rent lethal injec­tion drugs. The editors wrote, ​“No state should pro­ceed with sched­uled exe­cu­tions until the drug, or mul­tidrug cock­tail, it plans to use has been proven to be humane and effi­cient. The process of chang­ing how peo­ple are exe­cut­ed in Ohio should unfold with far more…

A new Texas law requir­ing DNA test­ing of all bio­log­i­cal evi­dence pri­or to seek­ing the death penal­ty could reduce the num­ber of cap­i­tal cas­es. District Attorney Billy Byrd of Upshur County noted, ​“Essentially, every piece of evi­dence will have to be test­ed,” he said, which could delay tri­als more than a year. ​“Certainly, that will be the case. We will have to deal with cer­tain delays and longer waits,” he added, not­ing it is not uncom­mon for DNA evidence to…

A fed­er­al judge in Pennsylvania over­turned the con­vic­tion of a death row inmate, stat­ing he was ​“sen­tenced to die for a crime in all prob­a­bil­i­ty he did not com­mit.” U.S. District Court Judge Anita Brody found errors in all facets of the case, noting that ​“Improper police work char­ac­ter­ized near­ly the entire­ty of the inves­ti­ga­tion.” She described the prosecution as ​“a grave mis­car­riage of jus­tice,” and crit­i­cized the defense for fail­ing to ade­quate­ly inves­ti­gate the evidence.

A num­ber of promi­nent groups have filed sup­port­ive briefs with the North Carolina Supreme Court ask­ing that the prac­tice of racial bias in select­ing jurors for death penal­ty cas­es be end­ed. Former senior mil­i­tary offi­cials, fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims, and poten­tial jurors denied the oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve because of their race were among those argu­ing that a rul­ing under the state’s Racial Justice Act be upheld. In 2012, Judge Gregory Weeks held that Marcus Robinson’s…

The moth­ers of two teenagers who were killed in California are plead­ing with the District Attorney to refrain from seek­ing the death penal­ty against the man accused of the crimes. Leah Sherzer said her daugh­ter Bodhi (pic­tured) was an adher­ent of the teach­ings of Gandhi, who advo­cat­ed non-vio­­lence. She said ​“Bodhi believed that the death penal­ty was wrong and that she would not want her case to be tried as a death penal­ty case.” Pam Thompson, the moth­er of the other teenager…