Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

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…

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…

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.

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…

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…

A report released by Amnesty International in July looks at recent devel­op­ments in the lethal injec­tion con­tro­ver­sy in the U.S. and pro­vides an overview of the death penal­ty since it was rein­stat­ed in 1976 in Gregg v. Georgia. Amnesty’s report, enti­tled​“An Embarrassment of Hitches: Reflections on the Death Penalty, 35 Years After Gregg v. Georgia, As States Scramble for Lethal Injection Drugs,” begins with a discussion of…

On July 29, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled that the state’s Forensic Science Commission (FSC) does not have author­i­ty to review evi­dence regard­ing the pos­si­ble inno­cence of Cameron Todd Willingham (pic­tured), who was exe­cut­ed in 2004. Willingham was con­vict­ed of set­ting the fire that killed his three chil­dren, but inves­tig­tions by promi­nent foren­sic sci­en­tists have dis­cred­it­ed the evi­dence of arson pre­sent­ed at trial.

On July 28, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the sched­uled August 18 exe­cu­tion of Larry Swearingen (pic­tured) in order to con­sid­er new evi­dence that might prove his inno­cence. Swearingen was con­vict­ed of the 1998 mur­der of Melissa Trotter, whose body was found in the Sam Houston National Forest. Trotter was last seen alive with Swearingen. Forensic sci­en­tists who exam­ined the evi­dence from Trotter’s body have said that she could not…

The Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to offer a new and more com­pre­hen­sive ver­sion of our Execution Database. The new data­base includes infor­ma­tion on the coun­ty where the crime was com­mit­ted and on the gen­der of vic­tim, in addi­tion to the infor­ma­tion avail­able in our pre­vi­ous data­base. The data­base includes such cat­e­gories as Race of Defendant and Victim, Foreign Nationals, Method of…