Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

At recent Congressional hear­ings, mem­bers of the Senate Judiciary Committee ques­tioned the Department of Justice as to why it has not approved any grants under the Kirk Bloodsworth DNA Post-Conviction Testing Program. Part of the Innocence Protection Act of 2004, the pur­pose of the pro­gram was to help defray DNA test­ing costs through grants to indi­vid­ual states. It has had con­gres­sion­al fund­ing of almost $14 mil­lion over the past three years, but has failed to dole out any of the funds. Kirk…

The Inter Press Service, with the assis­tance of the European Commission, has recently published ​“Crime and Justice: Abolishing the Death Penalty,” col­lect­ing more than 100 reports from dozens of coun­tries and every con­ti­nent. IPS used the voic­es of those who work direct­ly with the death penal­ty issue to present a world-wide pic­ture of the sta­tus of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The sto­ries told in the report are from activists, aca­d­e­mics, lawyers and death row inmates. They range from dispatches from…

The Richmond Times-Dispatch, a key paper in the Virginia state cap­i­tal, has long sup­port­ed the death penal­ty. But their recent edi­to­r­i­al takes the posi­tion that capital punishment ​“achieves no legit­i­mate goals that can­not be achieved by a life sen­tence with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.” The paper equates the death penal­ty with the state ​“play­ing God.” The full text of the edi­to­r­i­al fol­lows: Del. Frank Hargrove, one of the General Assembly’s Don Quixotes, hopes the umpteenth time will be the…

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch recent­ly uncov­ered hos­pi­tal files indi­cat­ing that Dr. Alan R. Doerhoff, a Missouri physi­cian who assist­ed with the state’s exe­cu­tions and who devel­oped the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col, gave mis­lead­ing answers dur­ing a 1999 mal­prac­tice suit about hav­ing his hos­pi­tal priv­i­leges revoked. In 1998, Doerhoff’s med­ical priv­i­leges were revoked from the Lake of the Ozarks General Hospital. Doerhoff was also denied priv­i­leges at St. Mary’s Health Center in Jefferson…

In an op-ed in the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram, police chief James Abbott stat­ed that the death penal­ty is bro­ken beyond repair and that the extra mon­ey spent pur­su­ing exe­cu­tions could be bet­ter spent on crime pre­ven­tion and the needs of vic­tims. Abbott is the Police Chief of West Orange, New Jersey, and he served on the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission. He was a long­time sup­port­er of the death penal­ty but even­tu­al­ly con­clud­ed that abolition was ​“just plain com­mon sense.” Chief Abbott…

Daryl Atkins, the defen­dant in the 2002 Supreme Court case (Atkins v. Virginia) that banned the exe­cu­tion of the men­tal­ly retard­ed, had his death sen­tence reduced to life with­out parole after a Virginia judge heard that evi­dence had been with­held from his tri­al attor­neys. Sentenced to death for the 1996 rob­bery and mur­der of Eric Nesbitt, Atkins received much atten­tion because of his men­tal lim­i­ta­tions and the ques­tion of whether it was con­sti­tu­tion­al to exe­cute those with mental retardation.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has ear­marked $136 mil­lion in addi­tion­al funds to build a new death row at San Quentin State Prison. In 2003, the California State Legislature had autho­rized $220 mil­lion for the same project, but the plans were put aside when cost esti­mates increased. The cur­rent esti­mate is $356 mil­lion to com­plete the con­struc­tion of the 768 new cells need­ed to reduce San Quentin’s sig­nif­i­cant over­crowd­ing. California already has the largest death row in…

“Under Pain of Death,” a new exhi­bi­tion at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York City, explores the death penal­ty through var­i­ous forms of art, focus­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly on the human emo­tions involved. Beginning January 21, 2008, the exhi­bi­tion offers art instal­la­tions, film screen­ings, and lec­tures on a vari­ety of aspects of the death penal­ty. The Austrian Cultural Forum New York is locat­ed at: 11 E. 52^nd Street New York, NY 10022. (Press release, Austrian Cultural Forum, Jan. 2008;…

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice exam­ined the state’s death penal­ty on January 10 in an effort to iden­ti­fy incon­sis­ten­cies in its appli­ca­tion and reforms for improv­ing the sys­tem. California has the largest death row in the coun­try and the back­log of cas­es has pre­sent­ed sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems in ensur­ing time­ly appeals and lim­it­ing costs. Legal experts sug­gest­ed that the state needs to nar­row its def­i­n­i­tion of what con­sti­tutes a cap­i­tal crime. The state now…