Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

George Gascon (pic­tured), San Francisco’s District Attorney and a for­mer chief of police, recent­ly dis­cussed his con­cerns about California​’s death penal­ty. He wrote, ​“Despite say­ing that I would­n’t rule out the death penal­ty as dis­trict attor­ney, I want to make clear that I have seri­ous mis­giv­ings con­cern­ing the poten­tial for wrong­ful con­vic­tions and the dis­pro­por­tion­ate impact of the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty on racial minori­ties. Moreover, victims’…

In the May 9 issue of The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin exam­ines the drop in death sen­tences in Texas and focus­es par­tic­u­lar­ly on the mit­i­ga­tion work being done by the Gulf Region Advocacy Center (GRACE) in Houston, head­ed by Danalynn Recer. Toobin cites a num­ber of pos­si­ble rea­sons for the drop in death sen­tences in Texas, including ​“the increas­ing use of mit­i­ga­tion, a strat­e­gy that aims to tell the defendant’s life sto­ry.” The arti­cle provides a…

Clark County, Nevada, has more pend­ing death penal­ty cas­es per capi­ta than any oth­er urban coun­ty in the coun­try. According to a review by Nevada Attorneys for Criminal Justice (NACJ), Clark County (Las Vegas) cur­rent­ly has 80 tri­als in which pros­e­cu­tors are seek­ing the death penal­ty. By com­par­i­son, Maricopa County in Arizona has the most pend­ing death cas­es (130), but it has twice the pop­u­la­tion of Clark County. Los Angeles County,…

A recent arti­cle by Terrence P. Dwyer (pic­tured), retired New York State Police Investigator, and George F. Kain, a police com­mis­sion­er in Ridgefield, Connecticut, dis­missed the notion that the death penal­ty is need­ed to pro­tect law enforce­ment offi­cers. Dwyer and Kain wrote that a major­i­ty of police chiefs believe that the death penal­ty does not deter vio­lent crime and rank the death penal­ty last in a list of effec­tive tools for fighting crime. ​“In states…

According to a com­pre­hen­sive review of stud­ies on the death penal­ty by Matthew Robinson, Professor of Government and Justice Studies at Appalachian State University, the death penal­ty in North Carolina is expen­sive, racial­ly biased and inef­fec­tive. Prof. Robinson ana­lyzed data from more than 20 death penal­ty stud­ies and found them to be remark­ably con­sis­tent in their con­clu­sions. He said, ​“In the past six years, three states have abol­ished the death penalty:…