Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

At a recent event sponsored by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon encouraged member nations to work towards ending capital punishment. Mr. Ban particularly focused on the risk of wrongful executions, saying, “We have a duty to prevent innocent people from paying the ultimate price for miscarriages of justice. The most sensible way is to end the death penalty.” The event — “Moving away from the death penalty — Wrongful Convictions” — featured the film…

On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in White v. Woodall, a death penalty case from Kentucky, to be heard during the Court’s next term. Robert Woodall pleaded guilty to capital murder and chose not to testify in the sentencing phase of his trial. His attorneys requested that the judge instruct the jury not to draw any adverse inferences from Woodall’s decision not to testify on his own behalf, but the request was denied because the judge concluded that Woodall’s guilty…

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram announced a change in its stance on the death penalty in a recent editorial marking the 500^th execution in Texas. While the newspaper had previously endorsed a moratorium on executions, it now supports the abolition of capital punishment. The editors said that moral grounds alone are enough to warrant ending the death penalty, but they also cited a variety of problems in Texas’s use of the death penalty, including geographical and racial disparities in sentencing…

An Ohio Supreme Court committee appointed to study the death penalty recently made recommendations on how the state’s capital punishment system can lessen the impact of racial bias. The committee recommended limiting the death penalty to fewer cases, focusing on those involving multiple victims, those involving victims under the age of 13, killings of police officers, and crimes committed to eliminate witnesses. The proposal attempts to remove the influence of race in capital cases by…

On June 26, lawyers in Florida filed a lawsuit challenging the 2013 Timely Justice Act, a law signed by Gov. Rick Scott earlier in June. The Act could accelerate executions by requiring the governor to sign a death warrant within 30 days of a Supreme Court review, provided the governor determines that the clemency process is complete. An execution must follow within 180 days. The lawsuit was filed by the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, a state agency that represents death row inmates…

On June 25 (Tuesday), the Oklahoma Supreme Court suspended former Oklahoma County prosecutor Robert Bradley Miller for his misconduct in murder trials that eventually led to the release of two death row inmates. In 2006, a federal judge dismissed the murder convictions of Paris Powell and Yancy Douglas after finding that a deal made between the prosecutor and the key witness in the case was never disclosed to the defense attorneys. In Tuesday’s ruling, the Oklahoma Supreme Court found that…

Kimberly McCarthy (pictured), who is facing execution on June 26, is scheduled to become the 500^th person executed in Texas since 1976. McCarthy’s attorney, Maurie Levin, recently filed a new motion to stay the execution because racial discrimination and inadequate legal representation played significant roles in McCarthy’s case. According to the filing, only four non-white potential jurors made it to the final selection from an initial pool of 64 prospective jurors. Three of the four potential…

The Oregon Supreme Court ruled that Governor John Kitzhaber may delay the executions of the state’s death row inmates during his term of office. In 2011, Kitzhaber instituted a moratorium on all executions in the state, saying, “I refuse to be a part of this compromised and inequitable system any longer; and I will not allow further executions while I am Governor.” That decision was challenged by death row inmate Gary Haugen, who had waived his appeals in order to speed up his execution. Haugen…

Steve Monks, a former Durham County, North Carolina, GOP Chair, recently called for an end to the death penalty in the state. Earlier in June, legislators voted to repeal the Racial Justice Act, which had allowed death row inmates to challenge their sentences using statistical evidence of racial bias. Monks wrote in an op-ed in Plain Talk Politics that the most recent attempts to reform capital punishment in the state are strong indications that “the system will never work properly.” Monk…