Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The for­mer direc­tor of Kentucky’s courts recent­ly rec­om­mend­ed that the state stop wast­ing mon­ey on the death penal­ty and direct those resources where they are needed more. ​“We’ve got a sys­tem in Kentucky where there’s not enough mon­ey for pub­lic advo­cates, for pros­e­cu­tors, for drug courts, fam­i­ly courts, for juve­nile ser­vices, for reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grams, and we’re using the mon­ey we have in a way I think is unwise,” said Jason Nemes, for­mer direc­tor of the state Administrative Office…

On November 9, the U.S. Supreme Court grant­ed cer­tio­rari in the case of Bobby v. Van Hook (No. 09 – 144) and issued a per curi­am opin­ion over­turn­ing a pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which had grant­ed Robert Van Hook a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing based on inef­fec­tive­ness of coun­sel. Van Hook had been con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for a mur­der com­mit­ted in 1985 fol­low­ing an encounter in a bar. The Supreme Court held that, judg­ing by professional…

The Tennessee Law Review recent­ly pub­lished a com­pi­la­tion of arti­cles and essays from its colloquium, ​“The Past, Present, and Future of the Death Penalty,” held in February 2009. Contributors focused on issues that have influ­enced cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment through­out the course of his­to­ry. An arti­cle by Hugo Adam Bedau, a promi­nent death penal­ty schol­ar, address­es the issues of inno­cence and racial bias in the appli­ca­tion of the death…

A recent opin­ion piece by the Editorial Director of the Clarion-Ledger in Mississippi points to the high costs of the death penal­ty as a way in which arbi­trari­ness enters into the appli­ca­tion of capital punishment: ​“When is a crime a crime deserv­ing of death?,” David Hampton asks. ​“When the coun­ty can afford it, of course.” The paper sup­ports the death penal­ty but the Editorial Director offered the exam­ple of Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith, who…

The costs of the death penal­ty have been a bur­den on var­i­ous coun­ties in Mississippi for many years. Quitman County was forced to raise tax­es for three years and bor­rowed $150,000 to pro­vide legal coun­sel to Robert Simon and Anthony Carr, who were sen­tenced to death for mur­ders com­mit­ted in 1990. A death-penalty case ​“is almost like light­ning strik­ing,” coun­ty admin­is­tra­tor Butch Scipper told The Wall Street Journal in 2002. ​“It is…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in America Magazine enti­tled The Price of Death reviewed the grow­ing prob­lems with the death penal­ty and stated, ​“It is time for the nation to con­clude once and for all that in our civ­i­lized soci­ety there is no place for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” The nation­al Catholic week­ly cit­ed the recent­ly botched exe­cu­tion in Ohio, racial dis­par­i­ties, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent as rea­sons why pub­lic sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has declined.