Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

One of the prin­ci­pal caus­es of wrong­ful con­vic­tions in death penal­ty cas­es and oth­er felonies is mis­tak­en eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny. On July 19, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued instruc­tions designed to help jurors bet­ter eval­u­ate the reli­a­bil­i­ty of eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tions. A judge is now required to tell jurors before delib­er­a­tions begin that stress lev­els, dis­tance, or poor light­ing can affect an eyewitness’s abil­i­ty to make an accu­rate iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. The new instructions…

A recent law review arti­cle by Professors Carol and Jordan Steiker exam­ines two decades of attempts to reg­u­late cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and con­cludes that this process may have paved the way to a find­ing that the death penal­ty is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al: “[T]he mod­ern American death penal­ty — with its unprece­dent­ed costs, alter­na­tives, and legal reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work — seems new­ly vul­ner­a­ble to judi­cial inval­i­da­tion. Reform of the death penal­ty and its abo­li­tion might well be on the same path.” The…

Conditions for the the 50 inmates on Mississippi​’s death row are per­haps typ­i­cal of death rows around the coun­try, but are nev­er­the­less debil­i­tat­ing and cru­el. Most inmates spend an aver­age of 12 – 15 years on death row while they pro­ceed through the appeals process, though some have been there longer than 30 years. Death row inmates usu­al­ly spend 23 hours a day in their cells. Dr. Stuart Grassian, a Harvard psy­chi­a­trist who has long stud­ied death row inmates in solitary…

Marcus Druery (pic­tured) is fac­ing exe­cu­tion in Texas on August 1 even though he has shown clear signs of men­tal incom­pe­tence. The Texas Defender Service recent­ly filed a motion to delay his exe­cu­tion, cit­ing the find­ings of a psy­chol­o­gist who exam­ined Druery ear­li­er this year: ​“His delu­sion­al ideas so per­vade his under­stand­ing of his case that he no longer under­stands that it was him who com­mit­ted the crime, and that he’s the one who has to suffer the…

A Georgia judge has removed Kelvin Johnson’s pub­lic defend­ers from rep­re­sent­ing him in a death penal­ty case because his lawyers request­ed more time to pre­pare for tri­al. Johnson was being rep­re­sent­ed by attor­neys from the Georgia Capital Defender Office, who said a delay was need­ed because an over­whelm­ing case­load and lack of fund­ing pre­clud­ed them from going for­ward at this time. The Georgia Capital Defender pro­gram, which was start­ed to pro­vide bet­ter representation to…

Yokamon Hearn (pic­tured) is fac­ing exe­cu­tion in Texas on July 18 despite clear evi­dence of brain dam­age since his ear­ly child­hood. Hearn’s tri­al attor­neys failed to con­duct an ade­quate inves­ti­ga­tion into Hearn’s ear­ly his­to­ry, which would have uncov­ered mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence that he was neglect­ed by his par­ents and had a his­to­ry of men­tal health prob­lems. His moth­er’s alco­holism was so severe that she drank to the point of pass­ing out dur­ing her pregnancy with…

A new book by Clive Stafford Smith, a British lawyer who has defend­ed death row inmates in the U.S., offers an in-depth view of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in America. In Injustice: Life and Death in the Courtrooms of America, Stafford Smith exam­ines the case of Kris Maharaj, a British cit­i­zen who was sen­tenced to death in Florida for a dou­ble mur­der, to expose prob­lems in the jus­tice sys­tem. The book reveals dis­turb­ing details of Maharaj’s case, including…

The United Kingdom has intro­duced restic­tions on the expor­ta­tion of propo­fol after offi­cials in Missouri announced they would begin using the anes­thet­ic in exe­cu­tions. Exports of sodi­um thiopen­tal, anoth­er anes­thet­ic pre­vi­ous­ly used in exe­cu­tions, were restrict­ed after sev­er­al states obtained that drug from DreamPharma, a drug com­pa­ny run out of the back of a dri­ving school in London. Vince Cable, the U.K. Business Secretary, said, ​“This…

On July 10, Ohio Governor John Kasich (pic­tured) grant­ed clemen­cy to death row inmate John Eley, who was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on July 26. Eley’s sen­tence was reduced to life in prison with­out parole. The gov­er­nor said he based his deci­sion on evi­dence that Eley act­ed under the direc­tion of anoth­er per­son, and that his men­tal capac­i­ty was lim­it­ed, saying, ​“Without those fac­tors it is doubt­ful that Eley would have committed…

A recent New York Times edi­to­r­i­al encour­aged the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to reduce the sen­tence of death row inmate Warren Hill to life. Hill is fac­ing exe­cu­tion on July 18. The edi­to­r­i­al not­ed that Mr. Hill’s intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties, includ­ing an IQ of 70, led the tri­al judge to find him men­tal­ly retard­ed. Georgia’s Supreme Court, how­ev­er, over­turned the judge’s rul­ing because men­tal retar­da­tion had not been proven ​“beyond a…