Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Over 400 media out­lets around the coun­try report­ed on DPIC’s recent 2011 Year-End Report. Coverage includ­ed sto­ries on the dra­mat­ic drop in death sen­tences, the decline in exe­cu­tions, and few­er states hav­ing the death penal­ty. Articles appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, Reuters, USA Today, CNN, TIME, and many oth­er papers. National broad­cast out­lets such as NBC’s Nightly News, National Public…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund​’s ​“Death Row USA” showed a decrease of 29 inmates in the death row pop­u­la­tion between January 1 and April 1, 2011. The total pop­u­la­tion of state and fed­er­al death rows is sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er now (3,222 inmates) than in 2000 (3,682 inmates). The size of death row is affect­ed by the num­ber of death sen­tences, the num­ber of exe­cu­tions, and the num­ber of sen­tence rever­sals. Nationally, the racial com­po­si­tion of those on death…

Some Georgia death row inmates may soon be with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion for their appeals, poten­tial­ly delay­ing the entire death penal­ty process. The Georgia Bar Foundation has tra­di­tion­al­ly pro­vid­ed funds to the Georgia Appellate Practice and Educational Resource Center, a twelve-per­­son non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that rep­re­sents or assists most of the 90 inmates on Georgia’s death row. Because of the eco­nom­ic down­turn, the Foundation’s col­lec­tions have declined in recent years and…

On January 3, attor­neys for Robert Gattis (pic­tured) filed a clemen­cy peti­tion with the Delaware Board of Pardons, request­ing they rec­om­mend com­mut­ing his death sen­tence to life with­out parole. Gattis is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on January 20. According to the peti­tion, details of fre­quent sex­u­al, phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse occur­ing dur­ing Gattis’s child­hood were nev­er pre­sent­ed to the jury or the judge at the time of his sen­tenc­ing. As a pre-school…

New Hampshire state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Phil Greazzo, who has pro­posed a broad expan­sion of the death penal­ty, will also offer an alter­na­tive bill to abol­ish the death penal­ty entire­ly because it is so unfair. Rep. Greazzo, a Republican, pre­vi­ous­ly intro­duced leg­is­la­tion to expand the state’s death penal­ty to include any inten­tion­al mur­der, main­tain­ing the law should pro­tect all peo­ple equal­ly. But he said he would rather have law­mak­ers do away…

On December 19, Dallas District Court Judge Teresa Hawthorne held that Texas​’s death penal­ty was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because it could lead to death sen­tences that were arbi­trar­i­ly sought and obtained. In rul­ing in favor of a defense motion, Judge Hawthorne acknowl­edged that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and oth­er courts have upheld the statute, but judges still have the oblig­a­tion to review the law based on its cur­rent prac­tice. The judge found parts of Texas’s statute…

The Chief Justice of California ​‘s Supreme Court, Tani Cantil-Sakauye, recent­ly called for a re-eval­u­a­­tion of the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem, say­ing the sys­tem is not working and ​“not effec­tive.” In her first pub­lic com­ments on the issue since she became head of the the state’s high­est court, Justice Cantil-Sakauye point­ed to the present predica­ment for the state, say­ing the death penal­ty system needed ​“struc­tur­al change, and we don’t have the mon­ey to cre­ate the kind of…

(Bureau of Justice Statistics, Capital Punishment, 2010 — Statistical Tables, December 20, 2011). For infor­ma­tion on the death penal­ty in 2011, see DPIC’s Year End Report. See Death Row, Sentencing and…

Two for­mer Supreme Court Justices in Kentucky and the President of the American Bar Association called for a sus­pen­sion of exe­cu­tions in the state until its death penal­ty sys­tem is reformed. Writing in the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Justices stated, ​“The list of prob­lem­at­ic cas­es is stag­ger­ing, and review of the sys­tem is deeply trou­bling. Fairness, impar­tial­i­ty and effec­tive­ness of coun­sel have been under­mined by seri­ous flaws that reveal sys­temic problems in…