Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

A recent arti­cle by Professor Aliza Kaplan (pic­tured) of the Lewis & Clark Law School exam­ines Oregon​’s death penal­ty in light of the action take by the state’s gov­er­nor, John Kitzhaber, to halt all exe­cu­tions. The arti­cle explores the his­to­ry of Oregon’s death penal­ty, the risk of wrong­ful con­vic­tions, and the costs asso­ci­at­ed with main­tain­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Kaplan found that exe­cu­tions are car­ried out very rarely, and, since 1976 only in instances…

In cas­es with mul­ti­ple defen­dants, the ​“worst” offend­er does not always receive the worst pun­ish­ment. For exam­ple, in Arizona, Patrick Bearup (pic­tured) was the only one among four co-defen­­dants to receive the death penal­ty, even though he was not direct­ly involved in killing the vic­tim. The oth­er three defen­dants, one of whom insti­gat­ed the offense, anoth­er of whom beat the vic­tim with a base­ball bat, and a third who shot the vic­tim, were able to secure plea bargains,…

On April 4, the Alabama House of Representatives vot­ed 103 – 0 in favor of a bill to posthu­mous­ly pardon the ​“Scottsboro Boys,” nine black teenagers who were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of the rape of two white women in 1931. The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 29 – 0, and Gov. Robert Bentley has indi­cat­ed he will sign it. All but one of the group were sen­tenced to death by all-white juries with vir­tu­al­ly no legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion. The mil­i­tary had to protect them…

Criminal Justice Professor James Acker of the University at Albany recent­ly dis­cussed the deci­sion by the District Attorney to seek the death penal­ty against James Holmes, the man accused of killing 12 peo­ple and wound­ing many oth­ers at a movie the­ater in Aurora, Colorado. In addi­tion to con­cerns about the defen­dan­t’s pos­si­ble men­tal ill­ness, Acker raised a num­ber of ques­tions about this course of action: ​“Will the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies some­how be made whole? Would the…

Since the 1990s, almost every death penal­ty state has expe­ri­enced a dra­mat­ic decline in its annu­al num­ber of death sen­tences. DPIC has pre­pared a series of graphs illus­trat­ing this trend in each state: State Death Sentences by Year. This page con­tains graphs show­ing the annu­al num­ber of new sen­tences in each state between 1994 and 2012. These same graphs can be found indi­vid­u­al­ly on each state’s State Information page. Nationally, there was a 75%…

A new inter­na­tion­al man­u­al cov­er­ing psy­chi­atric and psy­cho­log­i­cal issues aris­ing in cap­i­tal cas­es has been pre­pared by a team of foren­sic psy­chi­a­trists for use by attor­neys, judges, and men­tal health offi­cials. The Handbook of Forensic Psychiatric Practice in Capital Cases sets out mod­el struc­tures for psy­chi­atric assess­ment and report writ­ing for every stage of a death penal­ty case, from pre-tri­al to exe­cu­tion. It also dis­cuss­es eth­i­cal issues, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regard to an…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Nebraska Star-Herald indi­cat­ed a shift in its posi­tion on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Although the paper has always sup­port­ed the death penal­ty in the past, its lat­est edi­to­r­i­al described the death penalty as ​“a mock­ery of jus­tice” and a ​“cha­rade.” The edi­tors con­tin­ued to express the belief that some mur­der­ers might deserve cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, but the infre­quen­cy and unpre­dictabil­i­ty of exe­cu­tions led them to con­clude that “[S]o…

On March 26, Delaware​’s Senate passed (11 – 10) a bill to repeal the death penal­ty, after amend­ing it to exclude cur­rent death row inmates. Those who tes­ti­fied in sup­port of the repeal cit­ed racial dis­par­i­ties, a lack of deter­rent effect, and the high costs asso­ci­at­ed with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The bill will now move on to the House of Representatives, which is expect­ed to con­sid­er the mea­sure in April. On the same day, Colorado​’s House Judiciary…

Controversies sur­round­ing lethal injec­tions con­tin­ue in many parts of the coun­try. In Georgia, the leg­is­la­ture passed a bill to clas­si­fy the names of those involved in executions as ​“state secrets.” The bill requires the iden­ti­ty of any entity that ​“man­u­fac­tures, sup­plies, com­pounds or pre­scribes” lethal injec­tion drugs to be kept secret. In Arkansas, a state judge ruled that death row inmates can­not use the state’s Freedom of Information Act to obtain…