Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

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% of liberal…

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 Bureau of Justice…

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 criminal…

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 resentenced.

Prosecutors in North Carolina on December 11 dropped all charges against Jonathon Hoffman, who had been convicted and sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of a jewelry store owner. Hoffman won a new trial in 2004 because information favorable to Hoffman was withheld from the defense. During Hoffman’s first trial, the state’s key witness, Johnell Porter, had received immunity from federal charges for testifying against his cousin. The defense attorneys, jury, and the judge did not know of the…

Gov. Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky commuted the death sentence of Jeffrey D. Leonard for the 1983 murder of a Louisville store clerk before leaving office. Governor Fletcher reduced Leonard’s death sentence to life without parole. He had been convicted under the name of James Earl Slaughter. The Governor noted in his commutation that Leonard was not provided with adequate representation and that Leonard’s attorney did not even know his client’s real name during the trial. The governor’s general…