Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

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 a closer look at the conditions of those awaiting…

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 Advisory Council of Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said…

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 state court because the attorneys representing Maples had left the firm.

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 members. In granting clemency, Gov. Markell stated: “Even if one were to discount…

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 questions.” Since Pennsylvania reinstated the…

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 1995 crime. Appellate attorneys later learned that prosecutors…

(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 one resulted in an execution of the defendant. He…

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 Echols was sentenced to death. Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory shows the…

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 penalty was not being imposed on the worst offenders, but rather that a death sentence depended…

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 Radio’s Morning Editiion, and CBS Radio ran…