Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Recent rev­e­la­tions about the source of drugs used in lethal injec­tions in the U.S. reveal the extent to which some states have gone in their pur­suit of the dead­ly chem­i­cals. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation, Arizona obtained its three lethal injec­tion drugs from Dream Pharma, Ltd., a small phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny in west London locat­ed in the back of a dri­ving school. Clive Stafford Smith, direc­tor of Reprieve, a British organization…

In a recent arti­cle in the Peoria Journal Star, Jennifer Bishop Jenkins and Kathleen Bishop Becker, both of whom had fam­i­ly mem­bers mur­dered, called on Illinois​’s state leg­is­la­ture to end the death penal­ty as a bet­ter way of help­ing vic­tims. Becker and Jenkins wrote, ​“When our fam­i­ly mem­bers were mur­dered, issues like crime pre­ven­tion, vic­tims’ rights, and the death penal­ty stopped being mere­ly hypo­thet­i­cal… it’s because we pri­or­i­tize vic­tims and pub­lic safety that…

The infor­ma­tion and analy­sis in DPIC’s recent 2010 Year-End Report were report­ed in hun­dreds of media out­lets around the coun­try. Among the papers writ­ing edi­to­ri­als on the trends cit­ed in the report were the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Colorado’s Aurora Sentinel. The Times’ edi­to­r­i­al, ​“Still Cruel, Less Usual,” noted, ​“A report released this…

Following the release of the report from the New Hampshire Commission to Study the Death Penalty, New Hampshire​’s Concord Monitor called for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state. The Commission con­clud­ed a year of pub­lic hear­ings and care­ful study and chose by a 12 – 10 vote to rec­om­mend nei­ther expand­ing nor abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty. However, the Monitor point­ed out that the evi­dence pre­sent­ed to the com­mis­sion was pri­mar­i­ly in favor of repealing the…

On May 29, 2007, a jury in Charleston, West Virginia, rec­om­mend­ed death sen­tences for George Lecco and Valerie Friend for the mur­der of Carla Collins in order to pro­tect their drug ring. Prosecutors main­tained that Lecco arranged to have Collins killed and that Friend did the shoot­ing in 2005. Formal sen­tenc­ing was sched­uled for August 23. The judge is required to fol­low the jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion. These are the first fed­er­al death sen­tences in West Virginia since the fed­er­al law was…

Despite assis­tance from the coun­­ty-sup­­port­ed statewide Capital Crimes Defense Fund, local offi­cials in sev­er­al Idaho coun­ties are trou­bled by the eco­nom­ic bur­den of pros­e­cut­ing death penal­ty cas­es. They are also con­cerned about a recent fed­er­al appel­late court rul­ing that could over­turn all exist­ing state death sen­tences because Idaho’s sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures were deemed…

Gregory Wilson is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in Kentucky on September 16, despite hav­ing been rep­re­sent­ed by woe­ful­ly unqual­i­fied and unpre­pared attor­neys in his death penal­ty tri­al. It took over a year for the tri­al judge to find an attor­ney to take Wilson’s case. Wilson was indi­gent, and the max­i­mum state fee for a cap­i­­tal-mur­der rep­re­sen­ta­tion was $2,500. The judge even put a note on his cour­t­house door, saying: ​“PLEASE HELP. DESPERATE. THIS CASE CANNOT BE…