Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In an article entitled ​“Solitary Men” in The Texas Observer, Dave Mann describes the con­di­tions for inmates on Texas​’s death row. Inmates in the Polunsky Unit near Livingston, Texas, spend almost their entire time alone in a 60-square-foot cell. He writes,​“The cells have a small win­dow at one end. The steel door has a nar­row win­dow and, at the bot­tom, a slit through which guards slide trays of food.…Little pen­e­trates these cement boxes…

An op-ed by Bob Herbert of the New York Times high­lights issues raised by for­mer Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens that changed his mind on the death penal­ty in the U.S. Herbert cites infor­ma­tion col­lect­ed by the Death Penalty Information Center and points to shod­dy defense and state mis­con­duct in the delib­er­ate with­hold­ing of evi­dence as promi­nent abus­es in the sys­tem.​“Executions have been upheld in cases…

On Nov.19, a Davidson County judge ruled that Tennessee​’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dure was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, pos­si­bly delay­ing the exe­cu­tion of Stephen Michael West and oth­ers on death row. Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman, who issued the rul­ing, said that the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dure​“allows for death by suf­fo­ca­tion while con­scious,” because it did not spec­i­fy a suf­fi­cient dosage for sodi­um thiopen­tal, the first of three drugs used in lethal…

Gerald Kogan, a for­mer Florida Supreme Court Justice, and Mark White, for­mer gov­er­nor of Texas (pic­tured), recent­ly urged the U.S. Supreme Court to con­sid­er the death penal­ty appeal of Boyd v. Allen because of inad­e­quate defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion. According to the authors of an op-ed appear­ing in the National Law Journal, William Boyd’s defense lawyers in Alabama were bare­ly paid and did very lit­tle to try to…

In November, a pre­lim­i­nary res­o­lu­tion was pre­sent­ed to the United Nations General Assembly for a mora­to­ri­um on the use of the death penal­ty around the world. Panama, the European Union, Paraguay, Philippines, East Timor, Rwanda, Mozambique and Russia were among the res­o­lu­tion’s spon­sors. Other co-spon­­­sors includ­ed nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The res­o­lu­tion received 107 votes in favor, 38 against and 36 absten­tions. In 2007, a similar…

The Illinois Capital Reform Study Committee, cre­at­ed by the state leg­is­la­ture in 2003 and head­ed by Thomas P. Sullivan, a for­mer U.S. Attorney, recent­ly issued its sixth and final report on the Illinois death penal­ty. The report found that tax­pay­ers are spend­ing tens of mil­lions of dol­lars on the pros­e­cu­tion of a large num­ber of death-penal­­­ty cas­es, even though rel­a­tive­ly few result in actu­al death sen­tences. Since 2003, 18 peo­ple have been…