Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court decid­ed in Ring v. Arizona that the Sixth Amendment’s guar­an­tee of a jury tri­al includ­ed the deter­mi­na­tion of whether suf­fi­cient aggra­vat­ing fac­tors exist­ed to make a defen­dant eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. Now, five years lat­er, the man at the cen­ter of this case — Timothy Ring — has been re-sen­­tenced to life with­out parole. Ring’s case is among 27 Arizona death penal­ty cas­es affect­ed by the Supreme Court’s rul­ing and re-exam­­i­­nat­ed by the…

Uneven Justice: State Rates of Incarceration by Race and Ethnicity is a new report by The Sentencing Project that exam­ines the racial and eth­nic dynam­ics of incar­cer­a­tion in the U.S. with tables by state and by race. The report notes that African Americans are incar­cer­at­ed at near­ly 6 times the rate of whites and Hispanics are incar­cer­at­ed at near­ly dou­ble the rate of whites. One in nine (11.7%) African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 is cur­rent­ly incar­cer­at­ed in a prison…

UPDATE: After less than one hour of delib­er­a­tion, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles grant­ed Troy Anthony Davis a 90-day stay of exe­cu­tion. The stay means Davis’ exe­cu­tion will be on hold while the board weighs the evi­dence pre­sent­ed as part of his request for clemen­cy. (Associated Press, July 16,…

On July 11, South Dakota car­ried out its first exe­cu­tion in 60 years, mark­ing only the 15^th time the state has car­ried out a death sen­tence since 1877. The state exe­cut­ed 25-year-old Elijah Page after he dropped all appeals and vol­un­teered to die by lethal injec­tion. Page was only 18 at the time of his crime and had a long his­to­ry of being abused. During his tri­al, the pre­sid­ing judge noted, ​“Most par­ents treat­ed their pets bet­ter than your par­ents treat­ed you.” Page’s decision…

A new book by Charles D. Flores details his per­son­al expe­ri­ence as an inmate on Texas’ death row. The book, Warrior Within: Inside Report on Texas Death Row, pro­vides a first-hand account of Flores’ death penal­ty tri­al and his expe­ri­ences await­ing exe­cu­tion. It explores his quest to learn more about the law as he fights to prove his inno­cence and win his free­dom. In the book, Flores writes, ​“I start­ed to com­pre­hend what it meant to be on death row. I was begin­ning to under­stand it was…

Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed recent­ly issued a report find­ing that Ruben Cantu (pic­tured) was guilty of the crime for which Texas exe­cut­ed him in 1993. However, crit­ics have not­ed that Reed was for­mer­ly a judge who han­dled Cantu’s appeal and set his exe­cu­tion date, rais­ing a con­flict of inter­est in con­duc­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion of his guilt. Moreover, many who are famil­iar with the case doubt Reed’s con­clu­sions and say the report’s find­ings do not add up. Critics of Reed’s report…

A new report from the Charlotte School of Law on men­tal ill­ness and the death penal­ty reveals that obsta­cles entrenched with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem impede efforts to iden­ti­fy those with severe men­tal ill­ness and treat them fair­ly. The report, ​“Mental Illness and the Death Penalty in North Carolina: A Diagnostic Approach,” is based on a 2006 sym­po­sium host­ed by the law school. It exam­ines sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies of men­tal ill­ness and pro­vides an overview of laws estab­lished to protect those…

Since 2000, 50 peo­ple have had their death sen­tences reversed in Pennsylvania as courts found seri­ous legal errors in the inmates’ orig­i­nal tri­als. The num­ber of rever­sals near­ly equaled the num­ber of peo­ple added to the state’s death row dur­ing the past 7 years and have come from a vari­ety of courts. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued about 20% of the rever­sals, 50% of the death sen­tences were over­turned by state tri­al judges dur­ing the next stage of review, and anoth­er 30% of the…

Despite seri­ous doubts that he mur­dered off-duty police offi­cer Mark Allen MacPhail in 1989, Troy Davis is fac­ing exe­cu­tion in Georgia on July 17. Davis was con­vict­ed main­ly on the basis of eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny. Since then, sev­en of the nine key wit­ness­es against him have recant­ed or changed their state­ments. Three of those wit­ness­es have filed sworn state­ments alleg­ing that Sylvester ​“Red” Coles, anoth­er key pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness, had con­fessed to killing MacPhail. Davis’ defense attorneys…