Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Attorneys for Patrick Kennedy, the only per­son on death row in the U.S. for a non-homi­­cide offense, have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review whether a death sen­tence for a crime where the vic­tim was not mur­dered is con­sti­tu­tion­al. Kennedy was con­vict­ed of rap­ing his 8‑year-old step-daugh­­ter in Louisiana in 1998. Only a hand­ful of states have laws that would allow a death sen­tence for such a crime. No one has been exe­cut­ed for a non-homi­­cide offense since the death penal­ty was reinstated in…

Critical devel­op­ments in the mod­ern his­to­ry of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States are exam­ined through a bio­graph­i­cal sketch of Anthony Amsterdam (pic­tured), one of the nation’s most respect­ed death penal­ty attor­neys and legal schol­ars, in the lat­est edi­tion of New York University’s Law School Magazine. Prof. Amsterdam argued Furman v. Georgia before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, result­ing in the over­turn­ing of all death penal­ty laws and the spar­ing of over 600 inmates on death row.

A Texas judge blocked the destruc­tion of DNA evi­dence that could prove the inno­cence of a man who was exe­cut­ed in 2000. A joint motion filed by a coali­tion of con­cerned groups sought DNA test­ing on a hair tak­en from the crime scene in the case of Claude Jones. In addi­tion, the groups asked the court to impose a restrain­ing order to pre­vent Texas from destroy­ing the evi­dence while the court con­sid­ers their request for DNA test­ing. Judge Elizabeth Coker grant­ed the restrain­ing order request and…

Just two years after the cre­ation of the Georgia Office of the Capital Defender, which suc­cess­ful­ly defend­ed 30 death penal­ty cas­es in 2006 with­out a sin­gle client being sen­tenced to death, state bud­get cuts have left the attor­neys with less than half the resources need­ed to car­ry out their cur­rent case load. The office has been asked to over­see the defense of 80 clients this year, includ­ing Brian Nichols, who faces the death penal­ty for a high­ly pub­li­cized 2005 Fulton County courthouse…

PBS Broadcasting will explore the prob­lem of inad­e­quate rep­re­se­n­a­tion in death penal­ty cases in ​“Death Is Different” on September 7^th as part of the inves­tiga­tive pro­gram EXPOSÉ. The show focus­es on Stephen Henderson’s (pic­tured) exam­i­na­tion of the qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in 80 death penal­ty cas­es in 4 states. Henderson, a McClatchy News reporter and author of an award-win­n­ing series entitled ​“No Defense: Shortcut to Death Row,” found that poor­­ly-fund­ed defense lawyers are often failing…

China report­ed that the num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death in 2006 was the low­est in near­ly a decade, and offi­cials project that this trend will con­tin­ue in 2007. According to a state media report, dur­ing the first five months of 2007, the num­ber of death sen­tences hand­ed out in cas­es of first instance dropped approx­i­mate­ly 10% from the same time in 2006. The decline stems from a key legal reform requir­ing that all death sen­tences be approved by the Supreme People’s Court, a change made in…

University of Tennessee law pro­fes­sor Penny White exam­ines how two recent Supreme Court rul­ings should impact a cap­i­tal defen­dan­t’s right to con­front wit­ness­es dur­ing the sen­tenc­ing phase of his death penal­ty tri­al. Prof. White argues that a defen­dan­t’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to con­front actu­al wit­ness­es tes­ti­fy­ing against him dur­ing the guilt phase of his tri­al (rather than hav­ing such evi­dence admit­ted through hearsay or oth­er non-first per­son evi­dence), should be extend­ed to capital…

The Dallas Morning News called the death penalty ​“the great­est moral chal­lenge fac­ing law­mak­ers today.” In an edi­to­r­i­al address­ing con­cerns about Texas’ cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem, the paper noted the ​“dis­tinct and unac­cept­able pos­si­bil­i­ty of dead­ly error,” and called on law­mak­ers to impose a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions while the sys­tem is stud­ied. The edi­to­r­i­al made sev­er­al sug­ges­tions as part of a ​“fresh look” at the death penal­ty, includ­ing the for­ma­tion of an inno­cence com­mis­sion, the…

Arthur L. Alarcon, a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit in Los Angeles, sharply crit­i­cized California’s death penal­ty sys­tem and chid­ed law­mak­ers for fail­ing to pro­vide ade­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion and fund­ing for cap­i­tal cas­es. Judge Alarcon, a death penal­ty sup­port­er, wrote an arti­cle in the Southern California Law Review entitled ​“Remedies for California’s Death Row Deadlock” warn­ing that fail­ure to address California’s capital…

Just hours before tonight’s (August 30) sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Kenneth Foster, Governor Rick Perry (pic­tured) has accept­ed a Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rec­om­men­da­tion to stop Foster’s exe­cu­tion and com­mute his sen­tence to life. Perry was not oblig­at­ed to accept the high­ly unusu­al 6 – 1 rec­om­men­da­tion from the board whose mem­bers he appoints. The com­mu­ta­tion is the first of its kind in his eight years in office. The board deci­sion was announced about sev­en hours before Foster was…