Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

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 row is 44% white…

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 their grant to the…

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 child and through adolescence, Gattis…

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 with the punishment altogether than maintain the status…

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 regarding findings of…

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 change that is…

On December 20, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released its annual set of statistical tables on the death penalty in the United States, covering information for 2010. Hightlights from the report include: ‑The average time spent on death row for those executed in 2010 was longer than for any previous year since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The average time between sentencing and execution for those executed in 2010 was 14.8 years. ‑During 2010, 119 inmates were removed from…

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 administration of the death…

On December 20, the European Commission announced tough new restrictions on the export of drugs that could be used for executions in the United States. The EC added pentobarbital and sodium thiopental — two drugs on which almost all American executions currently depend — to its list of restricted products that are tightly controlled on the grounds that they may be used for cruel and inhuman treatment or punishment. “The decision today contributes to the wider EU efforts to abolish the death…