Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

After hours of debate and testimony, the New Jersey Senate today approved bill S‑171 which will replace the state’s death penalty with a sentence of life without parole. The measure was approved by a vote of 21 – 16 and now moves to the State Assembly, where approval is also expected in a vote on Thursday. The governor has indicated he will sign the bill into law, making New Jersey the first state to legislatively abolish the death penalty in over 40 years. Around the country, the death penalty…

Today, December 10, 2007, the New Jersey Senate will vote on a bill (Senate Bill 171) to replace the death penalty with the sentence of life without parole. Earlier, the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission held extensive public hearings that culminated in a report calling for an end to the death penalty. The Commission consisted of a wide range of perspectives, including law enforcement, victims, and attorneys. Some of the key findings of the report included: Abolition of the death…

On December 5, a Tennessee jury acquitted Michael Lee McCormick of the 1985 murder of Donna Jean Nichols, a crime for which McCormick spent 16 years on death row. In his first trial, the prosecution introduced hair evidence from Nichols’ car that the FBI said matched McCormick. DNA testing later found that the hair did not match McCormick and this evidence was not permitted in the new trial. McCormick’s attorney, Karla Gothard said after the trial, “We have been living with this case for years…

In a recent editorial entitled “The Myth of Deterrence,” the Dallas Morning News pointed to the many reasons why the death penalty does not deter murders: a majority of murders can be classified as irrational acts, and the perpetrators are unlikely to have considered the possibility of a death sentences before and during the crime; those who commit premeditated murder are also unlikely to consider the possibility of capital punishment because it is so unlikely to be carried out. “No rational…

By an 8 – 4 vote on Dec. 3, the New Jersey Senate Budget Committee voted to advance a bill to replace the death penalty with a sentence of life in prison without parole. The bill would make New Jersey the first state to legislatively abolish the death penalty since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Senator Raymond Lesniak, the bill’s sponsor, cited a recent case of wrongful conviction in New Jersey when explaining his support for abolishing the death penalty. He stated…

On Tuesday, Dec. 4, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Snyder v. Louisiana, a case involving a black defendant sentenced to death by an all-white jury after the prosecution used its peremptory strikes to exclude all of the qualified black jurors. During Allen Snyder’s 1996 trial for the murder of a man his estranged wife was dating, prosecutor James Williams of Jefferson Parish urged the all-white jury to sentence the defendant to death so that Snyder would not “get away with it”…

In a recent op-ed in the New Jersey Daily Record, Jim O’Brien detailed his experiences with the legal system as the father of a murder victim. His daughter Deidre was murdered in 1982, and the capital trials and appeals for the man convicted of the crime lasted another 8 years. O’Brien stated, “I’ve lived through the state’s process of trying to kill [a murderer], and I can say without hesitation that it is not worth the anguish that it puts survivors through….” Because of the “horrendous toll”…

If current trends continue, New York City will likely have fewer than 500 homicides this year, the lowest number in a 12-month period since reliable NYC Police Department statistics became available in 1963. As of November 18, 2007, the police department logged 428 killings, the majority of which were committed by friends or acquaintances or were drug or gang-related. In fact, only 35 homicides this year were committed by strangers to the victims, a number described as “microscopic” in a city…

The New York Times investigated the post-exoneration lives of the 206 former inmates who were wrongfully convicted and released through DNA evidence. Fifty-three of the cases involved murder convictions, and more than 25% of those wrongfully convicted had given a false confession or incriminating statement. Working from a list provided by the Innocence Project, the Times gathered information on 137 of the 206 exonerees and were able to interview 115 of those. They found that most DNA-exonerees…

In a recent article in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Dr. Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia University describes numerous serious errors in recent deterrence studies, including improper statistical analyses and missing data and variables that are necessary to give a full picture of the criminal justice system. Fagan writes, “There is no reliable, scientifically sound evidence that [shows that executions] can exert a deterrent effect…. These flaws and omissions in a body of scientific evidence…