Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

A new study by William Bowers and oth­ers pub­lished in the Criminal Law Bulletin revealed that most jurors in death penal­ty cas­es lack suf­fi­cient under­stand­ing of their duties, ren­der­ing the process uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by Supreme Court stan­dards. The study showed that cap­i­tal jurors often mis­tak­en­ly believe that a death sen­tence is required by law, and fail to take pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty for the defen­dan­t’s pun­ish­ment. The study sug­gest­ed that jurors tend to believe…

On February 2, the nation­al law firm of Sidley Austin LLP filed a suit against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in fed­er­al court on behalf of six death row inmates from Arizona, California, and Tennessee. The suit seeks to com­pel the FDA to bar the impor­ta­tion or use of unap­proved sodi­um thiopen­tal, a drug used by most states in lethal injec­tions, but no longer avail­able in the U.S. The plain­tiff’s brief states that, following a…

Recent edi­to­ri­als in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times called into ques­tion the cur­rent use of lethal injec­tion in exe­cu­tions, in light of the deci­sion by the sole U.S. man­u­fac­tur­er of a key drug used by almost all states to stop its pro­duc­tion. Hospira Inc. was the only U.S. pro­duc­er of sodi­um thiopen­tal, the main anes­thet­ic used in lethal injec­tions, but the com­pa­ny said inter­na­tion­al con­cerns about the death penal­ty prompt­ed its halt. The short­age of the drug…

Lundbeck Inc., a com­pa­ny based in Denmark and the sole U.S. man­u­fac­tur­er of pen­to­bar­bi­tal, a new drug select­ed by Ohio and Oklahoma for their lethal injec­tion pro­to­cols, has request­ed that states not use the drug to exe­cute inmates. The com­pa­ny recent­ly announced that their drug was nev­er intend­ed to be used in exe­cu­tions. A spokes­woman for the company said, ​“This goes against every­thing we’re in busi­ness to do. We like to devel­op and make available…

Terry Collins, for­mer direc­tor of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, recent­ly urged the state to replace cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment with life in prison with­out parole. In an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch, Collins said he per­son­al­ly observed the exe­cu­tion of 33 men from 2001 to 2010, and ques­tioned whether it was the right thing to do all 33 times: ​“Had all the reviews and appeals got this case right? Did the process make certain,…

A recent study con­duct­ed by Professors Glenn Pierce and Michael Radelet pub­lished in the Lousiana Law Review showed that the odds of a death sen­tence in parts of Louisiana were 2.6 times high­er for those charged with killing a white vic­tim than for those charged with killing a black vic­tim. The study exam­ined 191 homi­cides in East Baton Rouge Parish between 1990 and 2008 involv­ing a charge of first-degree mur­der. Even after con­sid­er­ing oth­er vari­ables such as the…