Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

A new study by Professor Franklin Zimring of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law pro­vides an in-depth analy­sis of the fac­tors that influ­enced the dra­mat­ic twen­­ty-year decline of street crime in New York City. According to the study, which was recent­ly dis­cussed in Scientific American, the rate of com­mon crimes such as homi­cide, rob­bery and bur­glary dropped by more than 80 per­cent in New York City. By 2009, the homi­cide rate was…

In Washington, King County has spent $656,564 to pros­e­cute three cap­i­tal defen­dants in two cas­es and over $4.3 mil­lion to defend the accused. The tri­als have yet to begin, but mon­ey has been need­ed for expert wit­ness­es, inves­ti­ga­tors, and foren­sic analy­sis. Prosecution costs do not include work done by police offi­cers and crime-lab ana­lysts. The coun­ty has strug­gled with con­straints on its crim­i­nal jus­tice bud­get and has elim­i­nat­ed the jobs of 36 pros­e­cu­tors since 2008. A…

DPIC is pleased to announce the addi­tion of five more states to one of our lat­est resources, the State Information Pages. Adding to the orig­i­nal 15 state pages made avail­able ear­li­er, pages for Alaska, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Wisconsin may now be accessed as well. These pages pro­vide his­tor­i­cal and cur­rent infor­ma­tion on the death penal­ty for each state (regard­less of…

Lawyers for Jerry Terrell Jackson, who is cur­rent­ly fac­ing exe­cu­tion in Virginia on August 18, recent­ly peti­tioned the U.S. Supreme Court to spare Jackson’s life, argu­ing that the jury in his 2003 tri­al did not receive suf­fi­cient evi­dence of the abuse he suf­fered as a child because his tri­al lawyers were inad­e­quate. Jackson’s cur­rent lawyers told the Court that this evi­dence could have con­vinced some jurors not to impose a death sentence:…

Seeking the death penal­ty in Indiana is very expen­sive, even though most cas­es in which the death penal­ty is sought do not end in an exe­cu­tion. According to the Indiana Public Defender Council, only 16% per­cent of death penal­ty cas­es in the state filed between 1990 and 2009 (30 out of 188) end­ed with a death sen­tence, and even few­er result­ed in an exe­cu­tion. In Vanderburgh County, where tax­pay­ers have spent $800,000 in the last two decades defend­ing cap­i­tal cas­es, only one of…

The lat­est edi­tion of the Death Penalty Information Center’s series of pod­casts, DPIC on the Issues, is now avail­able. This pod­cast address­es ques­tions about the U.S. Supreme Court’s role in over­see­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty. The pod­cast dis­cuss­es the kinds of cas­es the Court takes on review and briefly describes a few key Supreme Court deci­sions on the death penal­ty, includ­ing Furman v. Georgia and Gregg v. Georgia. The Supreme Court’s…

On August 4 in Virginia, Norfolk Circuit Court Judge Charles Poston accept­ed the state’s request to dis­miss charges against Derek Tice, one of four men known col­lec­tive­ly as the Norfolk Four (pic­tured; Tice is at the low­er left), who were orig­i­nal­ly con­vict­ed of a rape and mur­der fol­low­ing a sus­pect series of con­fes­sions. All four were sen­tenced to prison. Appeals by attor­neys for the Norfolk Four alleged that Robert Glenn Ford, the police…

The Death Penalty Information Center has pre­pared a sum­ma­ry of a com­pre­hen­sive cost study of California​’s death penal­ty sys­tem recent­ly pub­lished by fed­er­al Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School Professor Paula M. Mitchell. The orig­i­nal study is enti­tled Executing the Will of the Voters?: A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature’s Multi-Billion Dollar Death Penalty Debacle, and it was published in…