Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Each year, DPIC col­lects rel­e­vant death penal­ty arti­cles that have appeared in print and on media Web sites. Our col­lec­tion cer­tain­ly does not con­tain all such arti­cles, nor do we claim that it rep­re­sents the​“best” arti­cles. It is only a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of the exten­sive cov­er­age giv­en to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in print in a par­tic­u­lar year. For those inter­est­ed in exam­in­ing this cov­er­age, we have pre­pared an index of the articles from…

A man orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death for four mur­ders in Texas has been released on his own recog­ni­zance after new DNA evi­dence was dis­cov­ered. Robert Springsteen and co-defen­­­dant Michael Scott were released by State District Judge Mike Lynch after pros­e­cu­tors said they were not pre­pared to go to tri­al as sched­uled, leav­ing Judge Lynch to fol­low through on his promise to the defen­dants that anoth­er delay would mean free­dom for the defen­dants. Lynch said he not only had…

According to a study by the Independent Weekly, North Carolina con­ser­v­a­tive­ly spent at least $36 mil­lion dol­lars by seek­ing the death penal­ty instead of life in prison with­out parole over the past 7 years, just on defense costs. The state’s Indigent Defense Services orga­ni­za­tion said the aver­age cost of a death penal­ty defense was $63,700, and the state sought the death penal­ty 733 times between 2001 and 2008. The aver­age cost of the 1,785…

Washington’s for­mer med­ical direc­tor for the Department of Corrections, Dr. Marc Stern, recent­ly resigned from his post because of an ethichal con­flict with his role in super­vis­ing those who car­ried out exe­cu­tions. For exam­ple, the pris­on’s med­ical direc­tor, a nurse, attend­ed at least 8 prac­tice ses­sions with the four-mem­ber lethal-injec­­­tion team, includ­ing some held on the kitchen coun­ter­top at a team mem­ber’s home. As he left his…

A prosecutor’s mis­con­duct relat­ed to a Kentucky cap­i­tal mur­der case led the state to accept a plea bar­gain with the defen­dant in which he now faces a sen­tence of 10 years with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of imme­di­ate parole. Officials say Assistant Commonweath Attorney Ruth Lerner com­pro­mised the death penal­ty pros­e­cu­tion against Cory Gibson by cut­ting a deal with a wit­ness against Gibson. Lerner had not dis­closed a deal made with the wit­ness in a separate…

In a 5 – 4 rul­ing on June 18, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a low­er fed­er­al court rul­ing hold­ing that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guar­an­tees a con­vict­ed inmate the right to a DNA test on evi­dence that might prove his inno­cence. The defen­dant, William Osborne, had been con­vict­ed in 1994 of sex­u­al assault in Alaska and sen­tenced to 26 years in prison. Alaska is one of only 4 states in the coun­try that does not have…