Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

For our last post in 2010, the Death Penalty Information Center would like thank every­one who has con­tributed to and sup­port­ed the Center’s efforts in many ways this year. We thought it would be help­ful to high­light some of the resources avail­able on our web­site that you may have missed. In 2010, we con­duct­ed with Lake Research Partners one of the most com­pre­hen­sive nation­al polls on pub­lic opin­ion about the death penal­ty. You can find the…

In an edi­to­r­i­al, the Los Angeles Times has called on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California to com­mute Kevin Cooper​’s death sen­tence before leav­ing office in ear­ly January 2011. The Times not­ed that con­sid­er­able doubt has been cast upon the evi­dence used to con­vict Cooper of four mur­ders that occurred in San Bernadino County in 1983. In par­tic­u­lar, they cite the analy­sis offered by federal Judge…

On February 11, 2011, a sym­po­sium will be held at the Vermont Law School in South Royalton to explore cur­rent issues in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Entitled New Perspectives on Capital Punishment, the sym­po­sium will address the death penal­ty from the point of view of schol­ars, lit­i­ga­tors, and edu­ca­tors. The goal of the sym­po­sium is to con­tribute to the vital dis­course con­cern­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and its…

On December 21, the Death Penalty Information Center released its latest report, ​“The Death Penalty in 2010: Year End Report,” on sta­tis­tics and trends in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the past year. The report not­ed there was a 12% decrease in exe­cu­tions in 2010 com­pared to 2009 and a more than 50% drop com­pared to 1999. DPIC pro­ject­ed that the num­ber of new death sen­tences will be 114 for 2010, near last year’s num­ber of 112, which was…

The lat­est edi­tion of the Death Penalty Information Center’s series of pod­casts, DPIC on the Issues, is now avail­able for lis­ten­ing. This pod­cast, Readers’ Choice: Part One, is the first of two episodes that address­es ques­tions sub­mit­ted by read­ers of DPIC​’s week­ly e‑newsletter. Generally, this series of pod­casts offers brief, infor­ma­tive dis­cus­sions of key death penal­ty issues. Other recent episodes include discussions on…

More infor­ma­tion has emerged about the wrong­ful con­vic­tion of Anthony Graves (pic­tured), who was exon­er­at­ed from Texas’s death row in 2010. Prosecutor Kelly Siegler, who had tried many cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es and sent 19 peo­ple to death row as a Harris County assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney, and Otto Hanak, a state troop­er and Texas Ranger for 28 years, were brought into the case after an appeals court found that the original…