Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Dr. Philip B. Woodhall, M.D., who practiced emergency medicine in North Carolina for many years, recently wrote about the proposed role of doctors in carrying out lethal injections. He stated that medicine and executions do not mix. “[D]octors are given extraordinary rights and privileges,” he wrote, and “these powers are dedicated to the preservation of human life, not to the service of death.” Woodhall urged North Carolina’s Department of Corrections to abandon efforts to include doctors in…

Maricopa County, Arizona, has more pending death penalty cases than Los Angeles County, which has more than twice as many residents, and more than the so-called “death penalty capital” of Harris County, Texas. There are more than 130 cases in trial or awaiting trial, and its four indigent defense agencies say that they have run out of attorneys to handle the cases. Strained by the record number of cases, Judge James Keppel gave prosecutors, defense attorneys, and county officials five days to…

In her book, “Lethal Punishment: Lynchings and Legal Executions in the South,” University of Memphis professor Margaret Vandiver explores the complex relationship between these two forms of punishment and challenges the assumption that executions consistently grew out of — and replaced — lynchings. Vandiver’s book examines lynchings and legal executions in three culturally and geographically distinct southern regions. First she researched rural northwest Tennessee, where lynchings outnumbered…

According to a recent Maryland poll, a large majority of voters in the state support replacing the death penalty with a sentence of life without parole. The poll, conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc., found that 61% of those surveyed believe that the sentence of life without the possibility of parole is “an acceptable substitute for the death penalty.” Only 27% of respondents disagreed. Support for life without parole in Maryland has jumped nearly 20 percentage points in less than…

The French parliament voted to amend the country’s Constitution to include an explicit ban on the death penalty. In a special joint session held at the Palace of Versailles (pictured), France’s National Assembly and Senate passed the amendment by a vote of 828 – 26. The death penalty has been outlawed in France since 1981, but the recently passed amendment officially inscribes the prohibition into the constitution. “We are accomplishing the wish of Victor Hugo in 1848, the pure, simple…

In “Last Words From Death Row: The Walls Unit,” Norma Herrera recounts the tribulations she and her family suffered as they worked to free her brother, Leonel, from death row in Texas. The book documents court events and press coverage of the case and captures the family’s efforts to assist Leonel prior to his execution in 1993, four months after the U.S. Supreme Court held in Herrera v. Collins that, in the absence of other constitutional violations, new evidence of innocence is no reason for…

The Montana Senate has voted to abolish the state’s death penalty law. Supporters of the measure noted that the death penalty does not deter crime, is expensive, increases the suffering of victims’ families who must endure a lengthy mandatory appeals process, and is not applied fairly or accurately. “It’s not right. You can’t do it fairly, you can’t do it with equity, you can’t do it with justice,” said Democratic Senator Steve Gallus. Among the Republican Senators who supported abolition was…