Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

A for­mer Tennessee Attorney General, W.J. Cody, and a U.S. Court of Appeals Judge, Gilbert Merritt, both mem­bers of the American Bar Association’s Tennessee Death Penalty Assessment Team, called on pol­i­cy­mak­ers to thor­ough­ly review the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment laws and imple­ment sig­nif­i­cant changes that address con­cerns such as wrong­ful con­vic­tions, meet­ing the needs of vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers, and ensur­ing that the state com­plies with min­i­mum stan­dards required for fair­ness in capital…

A short­age of state funds to pay defense attor­neys, experts, and inves­ti­ga­tors has brought jury selec­tion in the tri­al of Brian Nichols in Georgia to a halt. Superior Court Judge Hilton M. Fuller (pic­tured), Jr. stopped jury selec­tion after just two days due to con­cerns that Nichols’ defense team did not have ade­quate fund­ing to rep­re­sent their client. His rul­ing came in response to a defense motion that not­ed, “[A]t this time, and for some peri­od of time in the past, no defense experts have…

With the stays of exe­cu­tion in Virginia on October 17 and in Georgia on October 18, it appears like­ly that no more lethal injec­tions will take place in this coun­try until the U.S. Supreme Court ren­ders a deci­sion in Baze v. Rees, a case chal­leng­ing the lethal injec­tion process in Kentucky. Christopher Emmett in Virginia was grant­ed a stay by the U.S. Supreme Court just hours before his exe­cu­tion. Jack Alderman’s lethal injec­tion was stayed by the Georgia Supreme Court a…

“Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir” by Stanley Tookie Williams is a first-hand account of Williams’ per­son­al jour­ney from co-found­ing the noto­ri­ous Crips gang to becom­ing a reformed pris­on­er and activist for youth from behind bars on California’s death row. The book, which has an epi­logue by Barbara Becnel and a fore­ward by Tavis Smiley, details how Williams became a pow­er­ful anti-gang activist dur­ing the two decades he spent on death row pri­or to his December 2005 execution.

The FBI​’s recent­ly released Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the United States, 2006, revealed that the mur­der rate in 2006 rose slight­ly from 5.6 mur­ders per 100,000 peo­ple in 2005 to 5.7 in 2006, but was at the same rate as in 1999 when use of the death penal­ty start­ed to show marked declines. There has been lit­tle change in the mur­der rate in the inter­ven­ing years when death sen­tences, exe­cu­tions, and the size of death row all declined. As in pre­vi­ous years, the South had the highest…

According to a new report from a team of inves­ti­ga­tors spon­sored by the American Bar Association (ABA), flaws in Pennsylvania’s death penal­ty sys­tem are so per­va­sive that the state risks exe­cut­ing an innocent person. ​“The prob­lems found in this assess­ment strike at the very heart of Pennsylvania’s jus­tice sys­tem,” stat­ed ABA pres­i­­dent-elect H. Thomas Wells, Jr. The five-mem­ber Pennsylvania assess­ment team that con­duct­ed the review urged a series of impor­tant death penal­ty reforms designed to…

Member nations of the European Union and the Council of Europe marked October 10^th as ​“European Day Against the Death Penalty,” an action to under­score the con­ti­nen­t’s firm com­mit­ment to end­ing exe­cu­tions through­out the world. Leaders from the EU and the Council of Europe launched the ini­ta­tive dur­ing an October 9^th con­fer­ence in Lisbon, Portugal. On October 10 in New York at the United Nations, a press con­fer­ence also marked the ​“World Day Against the Death Penalty” with international human…

MORE STAYS GRANTED On October 24, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion to Daniel Siebert, who was to be exe­cut­ed in Alabama on Oct. 25. On Oct. 22, the Georgia Supreme Court grant­ed anoth­er stay, this time to Curtis Osborne. These stays are relat­ed to the issue of lethal injec­tion as the U.S. Supreme Court con­sid­ers the matter. ​“A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH:” NEWS SERIES REVEALS ARBITRARY DEATH PENALTY…

A new report released by Amnesty International, Execution by lethal injec­tion — a quar­ter cen­tu­ry of state poi­son­ing, calls on med­ical pro­fes­sion­als to refuse to par­tic­i­pate in exe­cu­tions and details ongo­ing con­cerns about cur­rent lethal injec­tion pro­to­cols that could result in inmates feel­ing excru­ci­at­ing pain dur­ing their executions. ​“Governments are putting doc­tors and nurs­es in an impos­si­ble posi­tion by ask­ing them to do some­thing that goes against their eth­i­cal oath. … Medical…

In a recent meet­ing with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board, Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst (pic­tured) urged leg­is­la­tors to re-exam­­ine the state law that allows an accom­plice to be tried by the same judge and jury as the shoot­er in mur­der cas­es, adding that he agreed with Governor Rick Perry’s deci­sion to com­mute Kenneth Eugene Foster’s death sen­tence to life in prison based on sim­i­lar con­cerns. Dewhurst also called on leg­is­la­tors to estab­lish a state inno­cence commission to…