Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 28, 2007, that Scott Panetti, a man with severe men­tal ill­ness on Texas’s death row, deserves a rehear­ing on his claim of men­tal incom­pe­tence. The Court’s 5 – 4 rul­ing over­turned a deci­sion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that had used an over­ly restric­tive def­i­n­i­tion of what con­sti­tutes insan­i­ty. The low­er court had held that mere knowl­edge of one’s crime, with­out a ratio­nal under­stand­ing, was…

The fed­er­al death penal­ty impacts racial minori­ties dif­fer­ent­ly than it does whites accord­ing to a recent report from the American Civil Liberties Union. The report, The Persistent Problem of Racial Disparities in the Federal Death Penalty, notes that defen­dants of col­or make up the major­i­ty of the fed­er­al death row. And the risk of a case being autho­rized for the death penal­ty is 84% high­er in cas­es where the vic­tim is white, regard­less of the race of the defen­dant. The…

On June 25, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review a cap­i­tal case from Louisiana in which an all-white jury sen­tenced a defen­dant to death after the pros­e­cu­tor urged a death sen­tence so that the defen­dant would not​“get away with it” like O.J. Simpson. All five qual­i­fied African-Americans had been struck from the jury pool by the pros­e­cu­tion using peremp­to­ry chal­lenges. The defense has chal­lenged the selec­tion of the jury as a violation of…

Dissenting from a U.S. Court of Appeals deci­sion deny­ing relief to Gary Cone, Judge Merritt sharply crit­i­cized the Tennessee Attorney General for​“fal­si­fi­ca­tion” of the record, and he referred to the state’s judi­cial sys­tem as​“bro­ken” and​“inat­ten­tive.” Cone had been grant­ed relief on two oth­er occa­sions by the same Sixth Circuit, but those deci­sions were reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court. In the present case, Cone claimed that sig­nif­i­cant mit­i­gat­ing evidence had…

In the third edi­tion of what some have called​“the first true text­book on the death penal­ty,” author Robert Bohm, a cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer turned col­lege pro­fes­sor, engages the read­er with a full account of the argu­ments and issues sur­round­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. His book, ​“DeathQuest III: An Introduction to the Theory & Practice of Capital Punishment in the United States,” begins with the his­to­ry of the death penal­ty from colo­nial to mod­ern times, and then…

A recent study con­duct­ed by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has revealed that Texas is almost last among states in spend­ing on men­tal health ser­vices and per­forms poor­ly in oth­er men­tal health areas. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas ranked 47^th in the nation in per-capi­­­ta spend­ing on men­tal health ser­vices, and received a grade of​“D” for infor­ma­tion access and a grade of…

In his new book, ​“The Big Eddy Club: The Stocking Stranglings and Southern Justice,” author David Rose exam­ines issues of race and the death penal­ty. The book relates the sto­ry of Carlton Gary, who was con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal mur­der in 1986 and remains on Georgia’s death row for the rape and mur­der of sev­er­al elder­ly women in Columbus, Georgia. Rose, a con­tribut­ing edi­tor at Vanity Fair, links Gary’s con­vic­tion to a his­to­ry of bias in Columbus and the South.​“The Big…

Ruling in a pre-tri­al mat­ter in New Mexico, Judge Timothy Garcia of Santa Fe County’s First Judicial District Court held the state’s death penal­ty law to be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al based on a study by the Capital Jury Project. The Project’s research in 14 states had found that jurors often do not fol­low the law in mak­ing their sen­tenc­ing deci­sion. In par­tic­u­lar, the judge found that the jurors’ propen­si­ty toward mak­ing their sen­tenc­ing deci­sion during the…