Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The Georgia Senate Appropriations Committee cut the state pub­lic defend­er bud­get to $513,000, less than 15% of what Gov. Sonny Perdue had rec­om­mend­ed to cov­er costs until the end of June. The gov­er­nor had orig­i­nal­ly sought $3.6 mil­lion for the Public Defender Standards Council, which is now con­cerned that with­out nec­es­sary funds, the Georgia court sys­tem will come to a stand­still, includ­ing their defense in cap­i­tal cas­es. House Majority Leader Jerry Keen said that addi­tion­al funding would…

A recent poll by NationalChristianPoll​.com found that two-thirds of active Christians who oppose the death penal­ty are con­cerned about judi­cial error that could lead to an inno­cent per­son being exe­cut­ed. The poll also found that of Christians who do sup­port the death penal­ty, 60% do so because of bib­li­cal teach­ings. According to a Pew Forum poll from 2007, the strongest sup­port­ers of the death penal­ty are white evan­gel­i­cals, with 74% approval. However, John Whitehead, pres­i­dent of the…

Victor Streib, who has been research­ing the sub­ject of women and the death penal­ty for 20 years, has released an updat­ed ver­sion of his report ​“Death Penalty for Female Offenders.” In his research, Prof. Streib, a pro­fes­sor at Elon University School of Law in North Carolina and Ohio Northern University’s Pettit College of Law, has found that women are sig­nif­i­cant­ly less like­ly than men to receive a death sen­tence, pos­si­bly because pros­e­cu­tors seem less inclined to seek the…

The Death Penalty Information Center has con­duct­ed a sur­vey of death row pop­u­la­tions as report­ed by the var­i­ous state depart­ments of cor­rec­tion in January/​February 2008. From that sur­vey, the cur­rent death row pop­u­la­tion across the coun­try is 3,263. California con­tin­ues to have the high­est death row pop­u­la­tion with 669 inmates. Florida fol­lows with 388, and Texas has 370 inmates. A state-by-state break­down appears below. Except for Illinois and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, these num­bers are the…

A men­tal­ly retard­ed man in Texas accept­ed a life sen­tence for a mur­der that occurred over 28 years ago. Johnny Paul Penry was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death for the sex­u­al assault and mur­der of Pamela Mosley Carpenter, a rel­a­tive of a pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball star. Penry’s death sen­tence was over­turned twice by the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to the plea agree­ment on February 15, 2008, the pros­e­cu­tion was insist­ing on a fourth cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing hear­ing for Penry. In 1989, the U.S.

Judge Stephen Roth of Utah has decid­ed to force an unwill­ing attor­ney to han­dle the appeal of death-row inmate Ralph Leroy Menzies after no qual­i­fied lawyers were will­ing to take the assign­ment for the amount of pay offered. ​“The court ulti­mate­ly con­cludes that it has the author­i­ty to appoint unwill­ing coun­sel to rep­re­sent the peti­tion­er here, but only if the attor­ney appoint­ed is just­ly com­pen­sat­ed,” Roth…

Days after the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the elec­tric chair was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, a Lincoln Journal Star edi­to­r­i­al urged the state to recon­sid­er the death penalty: ​“Instead of rush­ing to pass a new means of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the Legislature should take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to final­ly get rid of the death penal­ty.” Nebraska was the only state to retain the elec­tric chair as its sole means of exe­cu­tion. The paper not­ed that it was the right time to take a broad­er look at the death…

Nebraska Supreme Court Rules Electrocution Unconstitutional The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled on February 8, 2008, that elec­tro­cu­tion is cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment under the state’s con­sti­tu­tion, out­law­ing the elec­tric chair in the only state that still used it as its sole means of…