Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

A recent study published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology about the U.S. Military death penalty system found that racial disparities among those sentenced to death are worse in the military than in other criminal courts. The study, conducted by Catherine Grosso of Michigan State’s College of Law, the late David Baldus of the University of Iowa College of Law, and others, reviewed all potentially death-eligible military prosecutions from 1984 to 2005 and identified 105…

In 2009, Maryland changed its capital punishment law, sharply limiting when the death penalty could be sought. Prosecutors can only pursue the death penalty in cases of first degree murder when there is DNA or other biological evidence linking the defendant to a murder, a video-taped confession by the defendant, or a video linking the defendant to the murder. As the first case testing this statute nears completion, DPIC’s Executive Director, Richard Dieter (pictured), was interviewed on…

On February 15, Florida is scheduled to execute Robert Waterhouse, a 65-year-old inmate who was sentenced to death for a 1980 murder in St. Petersburg. Waterhouse has been on Florida’s death row for over three decades, longer than any inmate previously executed by the state. His original death sentence was overturned in 1988 after his appellate attorney argued that Waterhouse’s trial lawyer erred by not presenting the court with important mitigating information. A second jury reaffirmed his…

Ron Briggs, sponsor of the initiative which expanded California’s death penalty law in 1978, recently announced his support for repeal of the law. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Ron Briggs explained that the 1978 Briggs Initiative was meant to “give prosecutors better tools for meting out just punishments, and that a broadened statute would serve as a warning to all California evildoers that the state would deliver swift and final justice” and “creat[e] a national model for capital…

Raymond Bonner’s new book, Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, is about to be published and was noted earlier by DPIC. An excerpt from the book appeared recently in The Atlantic. Andrew Cohen, also writing in The Atlantic, called it “the book of the century about the death penalty.” Cohen commented that “Bonner’s book comes at a crucial time in the modern history of the death penalty. It comes at a time when views are slowly hardening against the current unreliable and expensive…

The first hearing under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act convened at the beginning of February for death row inmate Marcus Robinson. The Racial Justice Act was passed in 2009, allowing death row inmates to use empirical and statistical data to demonstrate racial bias in their conviction or sentencing. Following changes in North Carolina’s legislature in the 2010 elections, there were efforts to repeal the Act. Governor Perdue vetoed a repeal bill and the legislature could not override her…

The latest edition of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row USA shows a decrease of 31 inmates between January 1 and July 1, 2011. Over the last decade, the total population of state and federal death rows has decreased significantly, from 3,682 inmates in 2000 to 3,220 inmates in 2011. The percentage of Latino inmates facing execution, however, has steadily increased over the years. In 1991, Latinos made up 6% of the nation’s death row. In 2011, Latinos or Latinas comprised 12% of death row…

(Winner: Silver Medal in the U.S. History category in the Independent Publisher Book Awards). A new book by Professor John D. Bessler, titled Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders’ Eighth Amendment, challenges the conventional wisdom that the country’s founders were avid death penalty supporters, and explores their various views on capital punishment. Prof. Bessler discusses how the indiscriminate use of executions gave way to a more enlightened approach that has been…

Edwin Turner (pictured), a death row inmate in Mississippi, is scheduled for execution on February 8. His attorney, Jim Craig, has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court and Governor Phil Bryant for a reprieve, based in part on Turner’s mental illness. Craig said, “The Supreme Court has not decided the question of whether a prisoner with a severe mental disorder or disability which significantly impairs that person’s ability to rationally process information, to make reasonable judgments and to…