Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

On January 18, the U.S. Supreme Court (7 – 2) ordered a new hear­ing in fed­er­al court for Cory Maples, an Alabama death row inmate whose state and fed­er­al appeals had been reject­ed by low­er courts because his lawyers quit and missed a crit­i­cal fil­ing dead­line. Writing for six of the Court’s Justices, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg high­light­ed the poor qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion offered by the state in death…

Professor Victor Streib (pic­tured) of the Ohio Northern University Law School has pub­lished the lat­est edi­tion of his peri­od­ic reports, Death Penalty for Female Offenders. This study offers sta­tis­tics and infor­ma­tion relat­ed to women who have been exe­cut­ed or are cur­rent­ly on death row. Among the report’s find­ings are: — In 2011, women con­sti­tut­ed 6.4% of all per­sons sen­tenced to death, the high­est per­cent­age for any year since 1973.

Jim Petro (pic­tured), for­mer Attorney General of Ohio, strong­ly sup­port­ed the death penal­ty as a state leg­is­la­tor, believed the state would save mon­ey because of the death penal­ty, and that it would act as a deter­rent. But, he recent­ly said,​“Neither of those things have occurred, so I ask myself,​‘Why would I vote for it again?’ I don’t think I would. I don’t think the law has done any­thing to ben­e­fit soci­ety and us. It’s…

On January 23, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the state of Ohio chal­leng­ing the uncon­di­tion­al writ of habeas cor­pus and bar to the re-pros­e­cu­­­tion of Joe D’Ambrosio (pic­tured), thus end­ing the cap­i­tal case. He has now been freed from death row with all…

A new study by the orga­ni­za­tion Together Against the Death Penalty exam­ined the sta­tus of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S. through a series of inter­views and vis­its to death penal­ty states in 2010. The report, 999 — The Death Penalty in the United States, was writ­ten by Arnaud Gaillard and it expos­es some of the seri­ous prob­lems with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in this coun­try from a human rights per­spec­tive. The report calls on deci­­­sion-mak­ers to take…

Frank Thompson, a for­mer state pen­i­ten­tiary war­den, has recent­ly joined efforts to repeal the death penal­ty in Oregon. Thompson, who super­vised the only two exe­cu­tions car­ried out in the state since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed in 1984, described the death penal­ty as a​“failed pub­lic pol­i­cy,” and said that​“cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment fails ter­ri­bly in meet­ing any evi­­­dence-based out­comes.” Thompson, who recent­ly joined the…

On January 18, the U.S. Supreme Court (7 – 2) ordered a new hear­ing in fed­er­al court for Cory Maples, an Alabama death row inmate whose state and fed­er­al appeals had been reject­ed by low­er courts because his lawyers quit and missed a crit­i­cal fil­ing dead­line. Copies of an Alabama court rul­ing in Maples’s case were sent to a vol­un­teer New York law firm han­dling his appeals but were unopened by the mail­room and returned to the…

On January 17, Delaware Governor Jack Markell com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of Robert Gattis (pic­tured) to life with­out parole, cit­ing the defen­dan­t’s trou­bled child­hood. Gattis was sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on January 20. By a 4 – 1 vote, the Delaware Board of Pardons had rec­om­mend­ed spar­ing Gattis’s life, cit­ing evi­dence from Gattis’s child­hood that indi­cat­ed severe phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, and sex­u­al abuse by family…

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…