Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

On May 24, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to con­sid­er whether a Texas death row inmate’s request for DNA test­ing can be con­sid­ered as a civ­il rights claim rather than part of his death penal­ty appeal. The Court stayed Hank Skinner​’s exe­cu­tion on March 24, just one hour before he was to be put to death. Skinner, who has always main­tained his inno­cence of the 1993 mur­ders of his girl­friend and her two sons, has requested that…

The Ohio Parole Board recent­ly rec­om­mend­ed clemen­cy for death row inmate Richard Nields, who was sen­tenced to death for killing his live-in girl­friend dur­ing an argu­ment in 1997. The board ques­tioned the valid­i­ty of med­ical evi­dence used at tri­al that helped sup­port the death sen­tence. Testimony pro­vid­ed by a doc­­­tor-in-train­ing indi­cat­ed the vic­tim had been beat­en and stran­gled. However, the deputy coro­ner and super­vi­sor of the…

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul E. Pfeifer recent­ly said all cur­rent death row cas­es should be reviewed to dis­cern which ones war­rant exe­cu­tion and which ones should be com­mut­ed to life in prison with­out parole.​“There are prob­a­bly few peo­ple in Ohio that are proud of the fact we are exe­cut­ing peo­ple at the same pace as Texas,” Justice Pfeifer said.​“When the next gov­er­nor is sworn in, I think the state would be well served if a blue-rib­bon panel was…

Over the past two years, Ohio has exe­cut­ed more inmates than any oth­er state except Texas. Since resum­ing exe­cu­tions in 1999, Ohio has exe­cut­ed 38 peo­ple, more than any oth­er state out­side of the South in that time peri­od. As in the South, race appears to play a sig­nif­i­cant role in who receives the death penal­ty. In the Ohio cas­es result­ing in an exe­cu­tion, 75% of the vic­tims in the under­ly­ing mur­der were white.

In a recent address to lawyers and judges at a judi­cial con­fer­ence, retir­ing U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens explained the evo­lu­tion of his views on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty. Regarding his 2008 asser­tion that the death penal­ty should be abol­ished, Justice Stevens elab­o­rat­ed,​“The risk of an incor­rect deci­sion has increased,” and that because of advances in DNA test­ing that have led to free­ing some innocent convicts,…