Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Michael May served as a Baltimore City police offi­cer and as a mil­i­tary police offi­cer. He for­mer­ly sup­port­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, but changed his stance upon learn­ing of inno­cent peo­ple who had been sen­tenced to death. Mr. May tes­ti­fied ear­li­er this yar before the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment. He recent­ly pub­lished an op-ed in the Baltimore Examiner explain­ing how his views changed and why he sup­ports for repeal of Maryland’s death penal­ty. The full…

States with soft­er gun laws have high­er rates of hand­gun killings, fatal shoot­ings of police offi­cers, and sales of weapons that were used in crimes in oth­er states, accord­ing to a study due out in January 2009. The study’s 38-page report, under­writ­ten by a group of over 300 may­ors and obtained by the Washington Post, focused on track­ing guns used in crimes back to the retail­ers that first sold…

A new book, Against the Death Penalty: International Initiatives and Implications, fea­tures lead­ing schol­ars on the death penal­ty and their analy­sis of both the pro­mo­tion and demise of the pun­ish­ment around the world. It con­sid­ers the cur­rent efforts to restrict the death penal­ty with­in the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the African Commission, and the Commonwealth Caribbean. It also inves­ti­gates per­spec­tives and ques­tions for reten­tion­ist coun­tries with a focus on the United States,…

A new study pub­lished in the Houston Law Review, ​“Racial Disparities in the Capital of Capital Punishment,” explores the rela­tion­ship of race to death sen­tenc­ing in Harris County (Houston), Texas. In the study, Prof. Scott Phillips of the University of Denver explores pat­terns involv­ing the race of both vic­tims and defen­dants, while con­trol­ling for oth­er vari­ables. Phillips con­cludes death sen­tences were more like­ly to be imposed in cas­es with white vic­tims than in those with black victims,…

The state of Washington has car­ried out 4 exe­cu­tions in 45 years, the last one being in 2001 when James Elledge waived his appeals and was exe­cut­ed. Some pros­e­cu­tors, leg­is­la­tors, and defense attor­neys are ques­tion­ing the val­ue of keep­ing the sys­tem. Kitsap County Prosecutor Russell Hauge (pic­tured) sup­ports the death penal­ty but has decid­ed against seek­ing it in a recent case because he felt the appeals process would sim­ply never end. ​“In terms of jus­tice, the worst thing that could…

States with the death penal­ty have con­sis­tent­ly had high­er mur­der rates than states with­out the death penal­ty. If the death penal­ty was act­ing as a deter­rent to mur­der, one might expect that the gap between these two groups would lessen over a long peri­od of time as states using the death penal­ty obtained an advan­tage in reduc­ing mur­ders. However, the gap has grown larg­er over the past 18 years. In 2007, states with the death penal­ty had a 42% high­er mur­der rate than states with­out the death…

Professsors Saundra Westervelt and Kimberly Cook of the University of North Carolina recent­ly pub­lished a study entitled ​“Coping with Innocence After Death Row.” The study appeared in ​“Contexts” pub­lished by the American Sociological Association. The authors stud­ied the lives of 18 inno­cent men and women exon­er­at­ed from death row. The unique research uncov­ers the dif­fi­cul­ty the exonerees have had in adapt­ing to life out­side of prison with­out the process of ​“dela­bel­ing,” or recognition…