Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

On August 30, Texas has sched­uled the exe­cu­tion of Kenneth Foster Jr. (pic­tured), despite the fact that all par­ties agree that Foster did not per­son­al­ly kill any­one. Foster was sen­tenced to death under the Texas Law of Parties that per­mits a per­son involved in a crime to be held account­able for the actions com­mit­ted by some­one else. In this case, Texas main­tains that Foster deserves the death penal­ty because he ​“should have antic­i­pat­ed” that a pas­sen­ger in his vehi­cle would exit the car with…

Billy Hill spent sev­en years as a dis­trict attor­ney in Shelby, Coosa, and Clay coun­ties in Alabama, and has recon­sid­ered his stance on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Mr. Hill says that he would wel­come a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in Alabama while a study com­mis­sion exam­ines the state’s death penal­ty to eval­u­ate whether it is ​“a wise and humane use of our resources.” Wrongful con­vic­tions, the arbi­trary nature of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, poor rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and the long-term…

“Dead Innocent: The Death Penalty Abolitionist Search for a Wrongful Execution” by Professor Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier was recent­ly pub­lished in the Tulsa Law Review. The arti­cle exam­ines the poten­tial impact that the con­firmed exe­cu­tion of an inno­cent per­son would have on the U.S. death penal­ty debate. The author states that iden­ti­fy­ing those who have been wrong­ly con­vict­ed and lat­er freed — as well as indi­vid­u­als who may have been inno­cent and exe­cut­ed — pro­vides clear rea­son for lawmakers and…

Judge Boyce F. Martin, Jr. (pic­tured) of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6^th Circuit called the death penalty ​“arbi­trary, biased, and so fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed at its very core that it is beyond repair.” Judge Martin dis­sent­ed in the case of Getsy v. Mitchell and said it made no sense that Jason Getsy received a death sen­tence for his role in a mur­der-for-hire con­spir­a­cy, while the oth­er two trig­ger­men and the mas­ter­mind of the crime, all escaped a death sen­tence. He wrote: In Jason Getsy’s…

A fed­er­al judge ordered the U.S. gov­ern­ment to pay a record $102 mil­lion for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s role in the wrong­ful mur­der con­vic­tions of four men in 1968, includ­ing one man who was sen­tenced to death. U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner said the FBI’s conduct was ​“shock­ing” and char­ac­ter­ized the gov­ern­men­t’s expla­na­tion for the events lead­ing to the wrong­ful con­vic­tions of Louis Greco, Henry Tameleo, Peter Limone and Joseph Salvati as ​“absurd.” She wrote, ​“Now is the…

In con­tin­u­ing a series that DPIC had high­light­ed ear­li­er, the Denver Post has fea­tured more than a dozen news arti­cles and a series of online videos, pro­vid­ing an in-depth look at the han­dling of cru­cial bio­log­i­cal evi­dence gath­ered dur­ing criminal investigations. ​“Trashing the Truth: The Hidden Story of Lost Evidence” exam­ined the nation­wide prob­lems with evi­dence stor­age, the destruc­tion of evi­dence, and the rela­tion­ship between miss­ing evi­dence and wrong­ful con­vic­tions. It also…

An updat­ed ver­sion of the ​“Espy File,” a data­base of exe­cu­tions in the United States and the ear­li­er colonies from 1608 to 2002, is now avail­able on DPIC’s Web site. This resource pro­vides detailed infor­ma­tion about each of the 15,269 exe­cu­tions record­ed dur­ing this peri­od and offers a unique glimpse into the his­to­ry of the death penal­ty in the U.S. For exam­ple, about 15% of those exe­cut­ed received the death penal­ty for crimes oth­er than mur­der, includ­ing 277 who were executed for…

Judge Carven Angel of Florida’s Circuit Court has ordered a halt to exe­cu­tions because of con­cerns that the state’s new lethal injec­tion pro­to­cols do not ade­quate­ly address prob­lems exposed in the state’s last exe­cu­tion. The new pro­to­cols were cre­at­ed after Florida’s botched exe­cu­tion of Angel Diaz in December 2006. The exe­cu­tion took more than 30 min­utes after two tries, and then-gov­­er­nor Jeb Bush ordered a review of the process. Judge Angel’s oral order to stop exe­cu­tions came on Sunday,…

A recent four-part series in the Denver Post about evi­dence in crim­i­nal cas­es detailed how police depart­ments across the U.S. store and dis­pose of cru­cial bio­log­i­cal evi­dence. The Post exam­ined 10 states in which author­i­ties destroyed bio­log­i­cal evi­dence in near­ly 6,000 rape and mur­der cas­es dur­ing the past decade. The inves­ti­ga­tion also revealed that over the past 30 years, destruc­tion of DNA evi­dence in 28 states has under­mined efforts by at least 141 pris­on­ers to prove their…

A new com­pre­hen­sive study of 200 inno­cence cas­es, all involv­ing peo­ple who were exon­er­at­ed by DNA evi­dence, found that erro­neous iden­ti­fi­ca­tion by eye­wit­ness­es, faulty foren­sic evi­dence, inac­cu­rate infor­mant tes­ti­mo­ny, and false con­fes­sions were the key prob­lems that led to these seri­ous mis­takes. The research — which includ­ed 14 death penal­ty cas­es — also found that courts per­formed mis­er­ably in iden­ti­fy­ing cas­es of inno­cence, and that those exon­er­at­ed were more like­ly to be members…