Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

A recent article in Time Magazine by Editor-at-large David Von Drehle examines the current state of the death penalty in the United States at a time when the Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of the most widely used method of execution — lethal injection. Von Drehle writes, “In a perfect world, perhaps, the government wouldn’t wait 30 years and several hundred executions to determine whether an execution method makes sense. But the world of capital punishment has never been that…

UPDATE: Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio has granted clemency to John Spirko, reducing his death sentence to a sentence of life without possibility of parole. The governor cited “the lack of physical evidence linking him to the murder, as well as the slim residual doubt about his responsibility for the murder that arises from careful scrutiny of the case record” in his statement granting the commutation on Jan. 9. (Warrant of Commutation, Governor of Ohio, January 9, 2008). For a full description of…

Ronald Curtis Chambers, who was originally sentenced to death for the 1975 murder of Mike McMahan, may be given a fourth trial following a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. Chambers was 20 at the time of his crime, and has been on death row longer than any other inmate in Texas. His second trial came 10 years after his first, following a Texas court ruling that Chambers should have been told that information from a psychiatric consultation could be used against him. Chambers received a third…

The United States Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday, January 7, on whether or not the lethal injection process in Kentucky is a violation of the Constitution’s 8^th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishments. While the case, Baze v. Rees, has prompted a de facto moratorium on executions, it does not concern the constitutionality of the death penalty itself. Currently, 35 of the 36 states with the death penalty use variations of the same three-drug combination in their lethal…

The Bureau of Justice Statistics typically releases an annual report entitled “Capital Punishment” containing tables and information on the death penalty for the previous year. Although BJS, which is part of the Department of Justice, did not publish a separate report for 2006, it did release information in tabular form that quantifies death penalty practice in the U.S. Information drawn from BJS’s recent tables includes: The number of people on death row declined from 3,245 in 2005 to 3,228…

In a recent front-page article in the New York Times, Joshua Marquis, the district attorney in Clatsop County, Oregon, and a vice president of the National District Attorneys Association, indicated that most prosecutors with experience in death penalty cases are ambivalent about it: “Any sane prosecutor who is involved in capital litigation will really be ambivalent about it,” said Marquis, who has long supported the death penalty. According to the Times, he said the families of murder victims…

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 concludes: The trend in American Indian executions during the present…

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 Report HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE 2007 REPORT Executions for the year: 42 — lowest in 13 years % Executions in Texas: 62% %…