Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

On August 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed a low­er court rul­ing vacat­ing Justin Wolfe​’s (pic­tured) con­vic­tion and death sen­tence for a drug-con­spir­a­­­cy mur­der in Virginia in 2001. His con­vic­tion was based pri­mar­i­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of the actu­al shoot­er, Owen Barber, who claimed that Wolfe hired him to kill Daniel Petrole because of an out­stand­ing drug debt. In 2010, Barber testified in…

The recent fed­er­al cap­i­tal tri­al of Brian Richardson in Atlanta illus­trat­ed the high costs of lit­i­ga­tion when the death penal­ty is sought. Richardson’s case required more than 30 lawyers, and cost hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in expert wit­ness fees. The U.S. Attorney’s Office assigned eight pros­e­cu­tors to the case and appoint­ed 20 pri­vate attor­neys to rep­re­sent inmates who were tes­ti­fy­ing against Richardson. The Federal Defender’s Office assigned…

Long-time death penal­ty schol­ar Hugo Adam Bedau died on August 13, 2012 . Dr. Bedau had been the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, and is best known for his work on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Dr. Bedau fre­quent­ly tes­ti­fied about the death penal­ty before the U.S. Congress and many state leg­is­la­tures. He authored sev­er­al books about the death penal­ty, includ­ing The Death Penalty in America (1964; 4^th edi­tion, 1997), The…

Death penal­ty cas­es cost more than ordi­nary cas­es because all the lawyers, judges, and oth­er per­son­nel will put more hours into prepar­ing, try­ing, and review­ing the issues, giv­en that a life is at stake. Jack D’Aurora (pic­tured) of the Behal Law Group, writ­ing in The Columbus Dispatch, described the time put in by just one fed­er­al judge in Ohio review­ing a cap­i­tal case towards the end of its appeal, includ­ing the lethal injection process:…

On August 8, Governor Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania signed an exe­cu­tion war­rant for Terrance Williams for the 1984 mur­der of Amos Norwood. The exe­cu­tion was set for October 3. Although Gov. Corbett has signed 15 pre­vi­ous death war­rants, all of those dates have been stayed because the defen­dant had not com­plet­ed the ordi­nary appeals process. Williams’ death sen­tence and con­vic­tion, how­ev­er, were affirmed by the fed­er­al Court of Appeals and…

A new study con­duct­ed by law pro­fes­sors Justin Marceau (left) and Sam Kamin (mid­dle) of the University of Denver and Wanda Foglia (right) of Rowan University found that the death penal­ty in Colorado is applied so rarely as to ren­der the sys­tem uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The authors con­clud­ed that Colorado’s death penal­ty law is applic­a­ble to almost all first-degree mur­ders, but is imposed so infre­quent­ly that it…

Carlos Moreno, who served as a Justice on California’s Supreme Court for near­ly a decade and upheld more than 200 death sen­tences, now sup­ports a bal­lot mea­sure to replace the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out parole because the sys­tem is bro­ken and unlike­ly to be fixed. Justice Moreno said that as long as cap­i­tal defen­dants are​“enti­tled to a fair tri­al and decent legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, there’s no way the…

On August 3, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States (OAS), which includes the U.S., called for a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the region and released a report review­ing key areas of con­cern about the death penal­ty. The report made a series of rec­om­men­da­tions for mem­ber States, includ­ing: — States should refrain from any mea­sure that would expand the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty or reintroduce…

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…