Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The Pennsylvania Senate recent­ly passed a res­o­lu­tion that will result in a study of the state’s death penal­ty and look at issues of fair­ness, equal­i­ty and costs of a pun­ish­ment that is rarely car­ried out in the state. The res­o­lu­tion was spon­sored by Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, a Republican, who said,​“Questions are fre­quent­ly raised regard­ing the costs, deter­rent effect and appro­pri­ate­ness of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. I believe that we need to answer these…

On January 10, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed (8 – 1) the mur­der con­vic­tion of Juan Smith because the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office had with­held crit­i­cal evi­dence that would have been favor­able to Smith at his tri­al. Smith had been con­vict­ed of mur­der in the course of an armed rob­bery based on the sole eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny of Larry Boatner. There was no DNA, fin­ger­prints, or oth­er phys­i­cal evi­dence that linked Smith to the…

(On January 10, DPIC post­ed an item about an edi­to­r­i­al in the New York Times crit­i­ciz­ing the arbi­trari­ness of the death penal­ty. That edi­to­r­i­al relied heav­i­ly on the research of Prof. John Donohue (pic­tured) of Stanford Law School and his study of the Connecticut death penal­ty. This post looks fur­ther at the under­ly­ing study.) Prof. Donohue’s research found that out of thou­sands of mur­ders com­mit­ted in Connecticut between 1973 and 2007, only…

On January 12, HBO cable TV will air a new doc­u­men­tary, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, the final install­ment of a tril­o­gy that recounts the sto­ry of three wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed teenagers in Arkansas–Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley – known as the​“West Memphis Three.” The young men were con­vict­ed of the 1993 rape and mur­der of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. Baldwin and Misskelley received life sen­tences, and…

An edi­to­r­i­al in the Sunday edi­tion of the New York Times on January 8 looked at recent stud­ies point­ing to the arbi­trari­ness of the death penal­ty. The edi­to­r­i­al not­ed that the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1972 because its arbi­trary imple­men­ta­tion ren­dered it uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. In par­tic­u­lar, the Times cit­ed a recent study of Connecticut’s death penal­ty indi­cat­ing the death…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…