Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Twenty-seven people were exonerated and released from prison this year, including some who had been on death row, according to a new report from The Innocence Project, a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people. The 27 exonerees served a combined 421 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. The exonerations occurred through the work of the Innocence Project Network, which consists of 54 organizations, including 45 in the U.S.

New evidence in the Troy Davis case in Georgia has recently emerged, further implicating another suspect in the murder of off-duty police officer Mark Allen MacPhail. In 1991, Davis was sentenced to death for officer MacPhail’s murder. Davis became the primary suspect after Sylvester “Redd” Coles told the police about Davis’s presence at the crime scene. During his 1991 trial, nine prosecution eyewitnesses testified against Davis. All but two of the witnesses (one of whom is Coles) have…

The Death Penalty Information Center released the “The Death Penalty in 2009: Year End Report” on December 18, noting that the country is expected to finish 2009 with the fewest death sentences since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Eleven states considered abolishing the death penalty this year, a significant increase in legislative activity from previous years, as the high costs and lack of measurable benefits associated with this punishment troubled lawmakers.

A single death penalty case in Indiana can cost taxpayers as much as $1 million. In Marion County, the costs of preparation for three potential death penalty trials have reached $659,000 this year alone, according to the Public Defender Agency. A high-profile death penalty case in the same county has cost nearly $850,000 and not all the bills are in. Pursuing a life sentence costs less than the death penalty, even considering the expense of a convict’s longer incarceration, according to Indiana…

On December 8, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled a lower federal court that had given relief to Joseph Kindler, a Pennsylvania death row inmate. Kindler had been convicted of murder in 1982, but then escaped to Canada from the Philadelphia Detention Center in 1984. Prior to his escape, his attorneys had filed post-verdict motions challenging his conviction and sentence. Kindler was subsequently caught and, upon his return to the U.S., he tried to reinstate his claims. The state supreme court…