Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Professor John Donohue of Yale University’s School of Law recent­ly con­duct­ed a study of death sen­tences in Connecticut and found that seek­ing the death penal­ty often cor­re­lat­ed with the race of the vic­tim and the defen­dant, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly with the sever­i­ty of the crimes, as the law requires. ​“There was basi­cal­ly no ratio­nal sys­tem to explain who got the death penal­ty,” Donohue said. ​“It real­ly is about as ran­dom a process as you can pos­si­bly con­struct.” After review­ing 207 murder cases…

David Baker has writ­ten a thor­ough and insight­ful analy­sis of how the death penal­ty in the U.S. has been used against Native Americans. In ​“American Indian Executions in Historical Context,” Baker places the exe­cu­tion of Native Americans with­in the his­to­ry of colo­nial­ism, slav­ery and the con­quer­ing of indige­nous tribes in ear­ly America. The arti­cle traces these devel­op­ments to the cur­rent era, about which the author…

U.S. Supreme Court stayed the Alabama exe­cu­tion sched­uled for night of Jan. 31.Watch the Independent Film Channel’s piece on the U.S. Supreme Court case regard­ing lethal injec­tion, Baze v. Rees. The video also includes a dis­cus­sion of death penal­ty trends with DPIC’s Richard Dieter and an inter­view with for­mer Texas death row chap­lain Carroll Pickett. 2007: DPIC’s Year End ReportHIGHLIGHTS FROM THE 2007 REPORT Executions for the year: 42 — low­est in 13 years %…

According to new polling analy­sis from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, sup­port for the death penal­ty among the gen­er­al pub­lic has dropped to 62% (August 2007), down from a high of 80% sup­port in the mid-1990s. Among black respon­dents, 51% opposed the death penal­ty and only 40% were in favor. Hispanics were about even­ly split with 48% in favor of the death penal­ty and 47% opposed. Eighty-two (82%) per­cent of con­ser­v­a­tive Republicans sup­port the death penal­ty, but only 41%…

Kenneth Richey, a British and an American cit­i­zen, is expect­ed to be freed soon after spend­ing 20 years on Ohio’s death row for the mur­der of his ex-girlfriend’s 2‑year-old daugh­ter in a 1986 apart­ment fire. Richey’s con­vic­tion was over­turned by a fed­er­al court in August 2007 after 15 years of appeals that cast doubts on wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny and the com­pe­ten­cy of his defense attor­ney at the ini­tial tri­al. More recent­ly, the orig­i­nal evi­dence pre­sent­ed by arson experts was found to be based on…

The Death Penalty Information Center has released its 13^th annu­al Year End Report, not­ing that exe­cu­tions have dropped to a 13-year low as a de fac­to mora­to­ri­um took hold in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s exam­i­na­tion of lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures. Death sen­tences have also dropped con­sid­er­ably in recent years. DPIC pro­ject­ed 110 new death sen­tences in 2007 — the low­est num­ber since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976, and a 60% drop since 1999. According to the…

Lubbock crim­i­nal attor­ney Jack E. Stoffregen will head West Texas’ first pub­lic defend­er ser­vice devot­ed sole­ly to cap­i­tal cas­es. Centered in Lubbock County, a sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed area that has few local crim­i­­nal-defense attor­neys with cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al expe­ri­ence, the West Texas Regional Public Defender Office will han­dle the cas­es of indi­gent defen­dants who can­not afford an attor­ney. The office, with a bud­get of $2.5 mil­lion fund­ed by Texas, is expect­ed to alle­vi­ate some of the high costs…

In a recent edi­to­r­i­al, The New York Times praised New Jersey’s replace­ment of the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. The Times wrote, ​“It took 31 years, but the moral bank­rupt­cy, social imbal­ance, legal imprac­ti­cal­i­ty and ulti­mate futil­i­ty of the death penal­ty has final­ly pen­e­trat­ed the con­sciences of law­mak­ers in one of the 37 states that arro­gates to itself the right to exe­cute human beings.” The Times not­ed the impor­tance of the inno­cence issue in the…

The Justice Project recent­ly released two pol­i­cy reviews that pro­vide sug­ges­tions for pre­vent­ing wrong­ful con­vic­tions in crim­i­nal tri­als. Using research and data from past exon­er­a­tions, the new reports, Expanded Discovery in Criminal Cases and Jailhouse Snitch Testimony, point to the places and sit­u­a­tions in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem where a wrong­ful con­vic­tion can be eas­i­ly pre­vent­ed. Expanded Discovery in Criminal Cases stress­es the impor­tance of full evi­den­tiary discovery in…

The Death Penalty Project, an inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion that pro­vides free legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for indi­vid­u­als fac­ing the death penal­ty in the Caribbean and Africa, recent­ly pub­lished A Guide to Sentencing in Capital Cases. The guide pro­vides judges, pros­e­cu­tors, and defense attor­neys with infor­ma­tion and sam­ple appeals to help them nav­i­gate the sen­tenc­ing phase in cas­es where a manda­to­ry death sen­tence for a spe­cif­ic crime was abol­ished, leav­ing the for­mer death row inmate to be…