Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

DPIC’s 2012 Year End Report received exten­sive media cov­er­age in the U.S. and inter­na­tion­al­ly. Coverage includ­ed pieces by the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, Reuters, New York Times, CNN, and hun­dreds of oth­er out­lets. National broad­cast out­lets such as NPR, MSNBC, and CBS Radio also ran pieces. Many papers edi­to­ri­al­ized about the…

Following the themes of DPIC’s 2012 Year End Report, the lead edi­to­r­i­al for Jan. 2 in the New York Times concluded that ​“cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is cru­el and unusu­al” as judged by the coun­try’s ​“evolv­ing stan­dards” of decency and ​“should be abol­ished” by the Supreme Court. The Times​’s edi­to­r­i­al not­ed the few­er num­ber of states car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions, the lack of any mean­ing­ful ratio­nale, the arbi­trari­ness of its appli­ca­tion, and…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund​’s Death Row USA showed a decrease of 43 inmates under sen­tence of death from January 1 to October 1, 2012. Over the last decade, the total pop­u­la­tion of state and fed­er­al death rows has decreased sig­nif­i­cant­ly, from 3,703 inmates in 2000 to 3,146 inmates as of October 2012. California con­tin­ues to have the largest death row pop­u­la­tion (724), fol­lowed by Florida (411), Texas (304), Pennsylvania (204),…

On December 26, U.S. District Court Judge Raymond Jackson ordered Virginia to uncon­di­tion­al­ly free death row inmate Justin Wolfe with­in 10 days and barred the state from using its key wit­ness in any retri­al of Wolfe. Wolfe was con­vict­ed of con­spir­a­cy in the mur­der of Daniel Petrole, a fel­low drug deal­er in north­ern Virginia. His con­vic­tion was based pri­mar­i­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of the actu­al shoot­er, Owen Barber, who claimed that Wolfe hired him to kill Petrole…

On December 21, Seth Penalver was acquit­ted of all charges and will be freed from Florida​’s death row, 13 years after being sen­tenced to death. He was orig­i­nal­ly charged with a triple mur­der and armed rob­bery that occurred in Broward County in 1994. His first tri­al end­ed with a dead­locked jury. At his sec­ond tri­al in 1999, he was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death. In 2006, the Florida Supreme Court (Penalver v. Florida, No. SC00-1602, Feb. 2, 2006)…

In a recent op-ed in the Houston Chronicle, for­mer Texas District Attorneys Grant Jones and Sam Millsap (pic­tured) encour­aged the state leg­is­la­ture to recon­sid­er the death penalty. ​“Both of us have been involved in the exe­cu­tion of men who may well have been inno­cent,” they said, men­tion­ing three cases that ​“raise seri­ous doubts about the wis­dom of con­tin­u­ing the death penal­ty.” Two of the cas­es, those of Carlos DeLuna and Ruben Cantu, involved possible eyewitness…

The Chief Justice of California​’s Supreme Court, Tani Cantil-Sakauye, said recent­ly that she does not expect exe­cu­tions in California to resume for at least three years because of prob­lems with the lethal injec­tion process. California has already not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in sev­en years. Justice Cantil-Sakauye said major struc­tur­al changes to the state’s death penal­ty are unlike­ly, and that a pro­pos­al by the for­mer Chief Justice to speed death penal­ty appeals is ​“dead.”…

A new report on the death penal­ty in Texas found that death sen­tences have declined by more than 75% since 2002, and more than half of all new death sen­tences were imposed in the Dallas-Fort Worth area this year, while no new death sen­tences were imposed in Harris County (Houston) for the third time in five years. The report, ​“Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2012: The Year in Review” by the Texas Coalition to Abolish Death Penalty, stated there…

On December 18, the Death Penalty Information Center released its latest report, ​“The Death Penalty in 2012: Year End Report,” on devel­op­ments in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the past year. The report not­ed the num­ber of new death sen­tences in 2012 was the sec­ond low­est since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976, rep­re­sent­ing a near­ly 75% decline since 1996, when there were 315 new death sen­tences. Only nine states car­ried out exe­cu­tions in 2012,…

In a recent op-ed in Colorado​’s Daily Camera, Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett expressed his con­cerns about the death penal­ty, as the state pre­pares to con­sid­er its repeal. Garnett said, “[T]he prac­ti­cal prob­lems with the death penal­ty make it of lim­it­ed rel­e­vance to Colorado law enforce­ment.” He point­ed to the high costs of cap­i­tal cas­es, the time required to pros­e­cute, and the ran­dom­ness of its appli­ca­tion as major concerns: ​“Prosecuting a death…