Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Use of the death penal­ty in California has declined in recent years. There have been no exe­cu­tions in six years, and the num­ber of death sen­tences in 2011 dropped sharply from pre­vi­ous years. District Attorney Mark Peterson of Contra Costa County said his office tries to be smart on crime rather than auto­mat­i­cal­ly seeking death. ​“People here want us to be tough on crime, but they want us to be smart on crime,” he said. ​“Even though we might per­son­al­ly believe a defendant…

On August 1, Delma Banks Jr., one of the longest serv­ing inmates in Texas death-penal­­ty his­to­ry, received a life sen­tence and will be eli­gi­ble for parole in 2024 under a plea agree­ment with pros­e­cu­tors. Banks was con­vict­ed by an all-white jury of a 1980 mur­der, but there were no wit­ness­es to the killing and no phys­i­cal evi­dence link­ing Banks to it. The prosecution’s case relied large­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of two infor­mants, both admit­ted drug users. In 1999,…

Joseph Ard, who spent 11 years on South Carolina​’s death row and a total of 19 years in con­fine­ment, was freed from prison on July 31. Ard was sen­tenced to death for the 1993 shoot­ing of his preg­nant girl­friend. After his con­vic­tion, new lawyers unearthed evi­dence that cor­rob­o­rat­ed Ard’s claim that the shoot­ing was acci­den­tal, result­ing from a strug­gle with his girl­friend over a gun. Ard was grant­ed a re-tri­al in 2007, and his lawyers pre­sent­ed sci­en­tif­ic tes­ti­mo­ny that his…

Ronald Smith (pic­tured) is one of two Canadian cit­i­zens on death row in the United States. Smith is fac­ing exe­cu­tion in Montana for the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of two mem­bers of the Blackfeet Nation thir­ty years ago. Smith’s co-defen­­dant, Rodney Munro, plead­ed guilty to aggra­vat­ed kid­nap­ping and was returned to Canada and released from jail in 1998. Munro cred­its Smith for sav­ing his life, say­ing that he was giv­en a plea deal and released because Smith admitted…

Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ban on the death penal­ty for defen­dants with men­tal retar­da­tion, Texas is plan­ning to exe­cute Marvin Wilson on August 7. Wilson has an IQ of 61 and adap­tive func­tion­ing lev­els even low­er; the only board-cer­ti­­fied expert to eval­u­ate Mr. Wilson con­clud­ed he has men­tal retar­da­tion (now known as intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty). Wilson strug­gled in school, and dropped out after the 10^th grade. According to experts who assessed his mental…

In a recent op-ed, Tracie Olson, the Yolo County Public Defender, explained why California’s death penal­ty could be replaced with more cost-effi­­cient and less risky alter­na­tives. Olson list­ed the death penalty’s high costs and risks of wrong­ful exe­cu­tions as rea­sons why alter­na­tives to the death penal­ty would be more ben­e­fi­cial to the state’s cit­i­zens. Olson cit­ed a 2011 study that found the death penal­ty has cost the state over $4 bil­lion since 1978, and that capital cases…

New infor­ma­tion on for­eign nation­als fac­ing the death penal­ty in the U.S. is now avail­able on DPIC​’s Foreign Nationals page. This page pro­vides back­ground infor­ma­tion on cit­i­zens from oth­er coun­tries who have been sen­tenced to death in var­i­ous states and under the fed­er­al sys­tem. The list includes infor­ma­tion on whether these defen­dants were informed of their con­sular rights under the Vienna Convention, which the U.S. has rat­i­fied and depends upon to pro­tect its citizens when…

On July 24, a Texas coun­ty judge declined to order a psy­chi­atric eval­u­a­tion to deter­mine whether Marcus Druery is com­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed on August 1. Earlier this month, Druery’s attor­neys request­ed a full inves­ti­ga­tion of his men­tal sta­tus, argu­ing he hears voic­es, believes he is being poi­soned with feces-spiked food, and lacks the under­stand­ing of his legal sit­u­a­tion required under the con­sti­tu­tion for exe­cu­tion. Reports by men­tal health offi­cials at the…

A new elec­tron­ic book by for­mer jour­nal­ist Peter Rooney offers an in-depth look at the case of Joseph Burrows, who was exon­er­at­ed from Illinois’s death row in 1996. In Die Free: A True Story of Murder, Betrayal and Miscarried Justice, Rooney explains how Burrows was sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of William Dulin based on snitch tes­ti­mo­ny. He was con­vict­ed pri­mar­i­ly on the word of Gayle Potter, who recant­ed her testimony eight…

Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, recent­ly deliv­ered the keynote address at the 30^th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion of the Open Door Community in Atlanta. Mr. Stevenson dis­cussed how defend­ing those on death row often takes a per­son­al toll on those engaged in this work, even to the point of feeling ​“bro­ken.” But, he added, ​“I’ve learned some very basic things, being a bro­ken per­son. I’ve learned that each per­son is more…