Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) recently completed a study of the effect of executions on homicide rates and found that both states that execute many people and states that execute no one show the biggest decline in homicides (34% and 36% declines, respectively). States that execute few people have the least decline (24%) in homicides. According to the study, “This peculiar result suggests the death penalty is irrelevant to homicide.” The study looked at the effect of the…

On April 8, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on “The Adequacy of Representation in Capital Cases.” Sen. Russ Feingold (D‑WI) presided over the session of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, which heard testimony from a variety of experts including Michael Greco, former President of the American Bar Association, Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, the Honorable Carolyn Temin of the Court of Common Pleas in Pennsylvania, and Donald…

A forthcoming study to be published in the Fordham Urban Law Journal found that almost all states that use a paralyzing drug in the lethal injection of death row inmates forbid the use of this same drug in euthanizing animals. Ty Alper, the associate director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, conducted the research that found that 42 states do not approve neuromuscular blocking agents in the ordinary euthanasia of animals. However, almost 98% of…

After the Pentagon announced earlier this year that it would seek the death penalty for six Guantánamo Bay detainees, little progress has been made in the case. According to The American Lawyer, the military commissions have had difficulties in finding qualified and willing defense attorneys to represent the six men who are accused of planning the September 11 attacks. Tom Fleener, a former military lawyer, said, “I don’t believe any [of the 15 attorneys in the office of the chief defense…

In a potentially far reaching ruling, a trial judge in New Mexico has barred the state from seeking the death penalty because the legislature has failed to provide adequate funding for defense representation. The state’s Attorney General, Gary King, agreed that the capital prosecution cannot go forward. After finding that funding for the defense was insufficient and raised constitutional problems, King wrote, “The state now confesses the motion to dismiss filed herein and cannot in good faith…

A recent Colorado poll conducted by RBI Strategies and Research found that 63% of citizens believe that money spent on the death penalty would be better used to close unsolved murder cases. Citizens likely to vote in the next election were told that the death penalty costs the state an extra $3 million per year, and then asked “would you favor or oppose replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment with no possibility of parole, and using the money saved to track down and prosecute the…

Glen Edward Chapman, a North Carolina man who was sentenced to death for the 1992 murders of Betty Jean Ramseur and Tenene Yvette Conley, was released from death row on April 2 after prosecutors dropped all charges against him. In 2007, North Carolina Superior Court Judge Robert C. Ervin granted Chapman a new trial, citing withheld evidence, “lost, misplaced or destroyed” documents, the use of weak, circumstantial evidence, false testimony by the lead investigator, and ineffective assistance of…

In “Confronting Evil: Victims’ Rights in an Age of Terror,” Prof. Wayne Logan of Florida State College of Law examines the use of victim impact evidence in mass-victim prosecutions, such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the terrorist attacks of September 11. The article will appear in the forthcoming issue of the Georgetown Law Journal. Victim impact evidence (VIE) is “information on decedents’ personal traits and the ways in which their deaths have adversely affected those left behind,”…

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California has released two reports on California’s death penalty dealing with the high costs and arbitrariness of the system. The report on costs, “The Hidden Death Tax,” found that a capital trial costs counties at least $1.1 million more than a non-capital murder trial, and that the state spends an additional $117 million a year pursuing the execution of those already on death row. One trial alone cost California $10.9 million. The ACLU writes…

Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia stayed the upcoming execution of Edward Bell, scheduled for April 8, 2008. In so doing, the governor issued a statement staying other executions and noting the U.S. Supreme Court’s consideration of the lethal injection issue (Baze v. Rees). The statement also remarked on the disruption that the setting of an execution date can cause: In order to await the Supreme Court’s ruling in Baze, and respecting the national legal consensus that no execution go forward until…