Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Recent exon­er­a­tions from death row, such as the release of Levon Jones in North Carolina on May 3, have been linked to the poor qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion some of these inmates received. This rais­es par­tic­u­lar con­cern as the nation resumed exe­cu­tions on May 6. William Lynd of Georgia was the first per­son exe­cut­ed since Sept. 25, 2007. But Georgia’s new pub­lic defend­er sys­tem has had its bud­get cut back and has been forced to elim­i­nate more than 40 posi­tions. Robin Maher of the American…

Georgia is plan­ning to excute William Earl Lynd at 7 PM on May 6. If the lethal injec­tion goes for­ward, this would be first exe­cu­tion in the U.S. since September 25, 2007. On that day, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a chal­lenge to the lethal injec­tion process in Baze v. Rees. On April 16, 2008, the Court upheld the process of lethal injec­tion as prac­ticed in Kentucky, sig­nalling a prob­a­ble end to the 7‑month mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. However, the pos­si­ble resump­tion of executions comes…

Eighteen peo­ple have been exon­er­at­ed of seri­ous vio­lent crimes from a sin­gle Texas coun­ty through DNA-test­ing in recent years. James Woodward was the lat­est per­son to be freed from con­fine­ment from Dallas County. He spent 27 years in prison for the wrong­ful con­vic­tion of rap­ing and mur­der­ing his girl­friend in 1981. Statewide in Texas there have been 30 such exon­er­a­tions. As a par­tial response, state Senator Rodney Ellis has called for a sum­mit on inno­cence to take place…

The state of North Carolina dropped all charges against Levon Jones, and he was freed today (May 2) after spend­ing 13 years on death row. U.S. District Court Judge Terrence Boyle over­turned Jones’s con­vic­tion two years ago, but he was held in prison await­ing a pos­si­ble retri­al until pros­e­cu­tors announced that they were dis­miss­ing all charges. Judge Boyle crit­i­cized Jones’s defense attorneys for ​“con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly defi­cient” per­for­mance, not­ing their fail­ure to research the…

According to a recent study by Prof. David Sloss of the St. Louis University School of Law, and oth­ers, only a small per­cent­age of eli­gi­ble mur­der cas­es in Missouri are pros­e­cut­ed as death penal­ty cas­es, and even few­er result in a death sen­tence. Only 2.5 per­cent of defen­dants pros­e­cut­ed for inten­tion­al homi­cide are sen­tenced to death. In anoth­er 2.5 per­cent of cas­es, juries reject the death penal­ty. Ninety-five per­cent of inten­tion­al homi­cide cas­es are nev­er pre­sent­ed to the jury as…

A new study by Professor Scott Phillips of the Univeristy of Denver found that black defen­dants in Houston, Texas, are more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death than white defen­dants, even when oth­er vari­ables are account­ed for. The research, to be pub­lished in a forth­com­ing edi­tion of the Houston Law Review, looked at cas­es eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty in the coun­ty that is the source of the high­est num­ber of exe­cu­tions in Texas, which itself is respon­si­ble for more executions…

The gov­er­nor of Missouri, Matt Blunt, has pro­posed that his state expand the death penal­ty to include cas­es of sex­u­al assault against chil­dren where the vic­tim is not killed. However, accord­ing to an edi­to­r­i­al in the Springfield News-Leader, such a law would not pro­tect chil­dren. Instead, it could make it less like­ly that these offens­es would be report­ed, would put the child in dan­ger of even worse crimes, and would involve the child and the fam­i­ly in years…

Rudolph J. Gerber served as a pros­e­cu­tor and as a judge on Arizona​’s Court of Appeals for 13 years. Earlier in his career, then-state sen­a­tor Sandra Day O’Connor asked Mr. Gerber to draft the statute that even­tu­al­ly became Arizona’s death penal­ty law. In a recent op-ed in the Sacramento Bee, he expressed his con­cerns about the prac­tice of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and said that states should use the present peri­od in which no exe­cu­tions are occur­ring as an…