Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

A Federal Bureau of Investigation review of more than 21,000 cas­es has revealed 27 death penal­ty cas­es in which the FBI’s foren­sic experts may have exag­ger­at­ed the sci­en­tif­ic con­clu­sions that could be drawn from their tes­ti­mo­ny, mis­tak­en­ly link­ing defen­dants to crimes they may not have com­mit­ted. It is pos­si­ble that some of these cas­es involve inmates who have already been exe­cut­ed. Under par­tic­u­lar scruti­ny is tes­ti­mo­ny regard­ing hair evi­dence. Although FBI laboratory…

The Bureau of Justice Statistics recent­ly released its annu­al review of the death penal­ty in the U.S., focus­ing on 2011. The report not­ed the con­tin­ued decline in the use of the death penal­ty in recent years. In 2011, 80 new inmates were received under sen­tence of death, the low­est num­ber since 1973, and a 27% decrease from the year before. Executions also declined to 43, com­pared with 46 in 2010. The aver­age time between sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion in 2011 was 16.5 years, 20…

A com­mit­tee empan­eled by the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court made three pre­lim­i­nary rec­om­men­da­tions at its June meet­ing for reform­ing the state’s death penal­ty. The pan­el, which con­sists of pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, judges, and aca­d­e­m­ic experts, vot­ed to rec­om­mend a reduc­tion in the scope of crimes eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty, the cre­ation of a statewide pan­el to decide on seek­ing a death sen­tence, and the enact­ment of a Racial Justice Act. The restriction of…

UPDATE: Warren Hill was grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion by a Georgia court just hours before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion on July 15. A hear­ing is sched­uled for July 18 to con­sid­er chal­lenges to a new state law that shields the iden­ti­ty of the lethal injec­tion drug’s man­u­fac­tur­er and the pre­scrib­ing physi­cian from the pub­lic. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 15, 2013). As a peti­tion on behalf of Georgia death row inmate Warren…

On June 10, California announced it would no longer try to defend its cur­rent lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. In May, a court rul­ing inval­i­dat­ed the state’s three-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col because state offi­cials failed to fol­low admin­is­tra­tive rules in adopt­ing the pro­to­col. Governor Jerry Brown and oth­er offi­cials will instead pro­ceed with devel­op­ing a sin­­gle-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col sim­i­lar to those adopt­ed recent­ly in states like Ohio, Arizona, and Washington.

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel recent­ly said the state’s death penal­ty system was ​“com­plete­ly bro­ken” and rec­om­mend­ed it be abol­ished if the state’s exe­cu­tion method isn’t changed. McDaniel said, ​“It’s time for the pol­i­cy mak­ers of Arkansas to say, ​‘Do we con­tin­ue with a bro­ken sys­tem and throw­ing mon­ey and resources at essen­tial­ly point­less lit­i­ga­tion, or do we mod­i­fy the sys­tem?’ And there’s only real­ly two mod­i­fi­ca­tions that I see available —…

In the first half of 2013, six states car­ried out 18 exe­cu­tions. In the same peri­od last year, there were 23 exe­cu­tions in 8 states. The annu­al num­ber of exe­cu­tions has declined sig­nif­i­cant­ly from its peak in 1999, when 98 peo­ple were put to death. There were 43 exe­cu­tions in 2011 and 2012. Sixteen of this year’s exe­cu­tions (89%) have been in the South, with near­ly half in Texas (8). Eight of the defen­dants exe­cut­ed so far this year were black, and ten were white.

The lat­est edi­tion of the Yale Law Journal fea­tures essays com­mem­o­rat­ing the 50^th anniver­sary of Gideon v. Wainwright, the land­mark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion guar­an­tee­ing all crim­i­nal defen­dants a right to an attor­ney. The col­lec­tion of essays from lead­ing legal experts includes an arti­cle by Stephen Bright and Sia Sanneh, titled ​“Fifty Years of Defiance and Resistance After Gideon v. Wainwright,” argu­ing that the criminal…

Timothy McGinty, the Chief Prosecutor of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, is encour­ag­ing the Ohio Parole Board to rec­om­mend clemen­cy for death row inmate Billy Slagle (pic­tured). Slagle was sen­tenced to death in 1988 for the mur­der of his neigh­bor, Mari Ann Pope. At the time of the mur­der, Slagle was only 18 years old, which, along with Slagle’s prob­lems of sub­stance abuse and his record of good behav­ior in prison, has now led the…

The American Bar Association recent­ly released its annu­al report, The State of Criminal Justice-2013, includ­ing a chap­ter on devel­op­ments in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States. In that chap­ter, author Ronald Tabak focus­es on the con­tin­u­ing decline in death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions, recent inno­cence cas­es, and new voic­es who have spo­ken out about the death penal­ty. The chap­ter high­lights recent research on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, includ­ing stud­ies that found racial…