Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The Death Penalty Information Center held its 10^th Annual Thurgood Marshall Journalism Awards at the National Press Club on Monday, June 26. This year’s award recip­i­ents were Jacqui Lofaro and Victor Teich of Justice Productions for their documentary ​“The Empty Chair,” and reporter Robert Nelson of the Phoenix New Times for his cov­er­age of death row exoneree Ray Krone. Lofaro and Teich received this year’s Award for excel­lence in the tele­vi­sion broadcast category.

Members of the New York Assembly’s Codes Committee recent­ly vot­ed 13 – 5 against a bill to rein­state the death penal­ty, a vote that revealed a grow­ing bi-par­ti­san oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Last year’s vote on the same mea­sure was 11 – 7. New York’s death penal­ty was over­turned in 2004 by the state’s high­est court. A num­ber of Assembly mem­bers have said they no longer sup­port the death penal­ty because of grow­ing evi­dence that it risks inno­cent lives and because the state now has the…

A Chicago Tribune inves­ti­ga­tion set for release this week­end will reveal ground­break­ing evi­dence that Texas may have exe­cut­ed an inno­cent man in 1989. The defen­dant, Carlos DeLuna, was exe­cut­ed for the fatal stab­bing of Texas con­ve­nience store clerk Wanda Lopez in 1983. New evi­dence uncov­ered by reporters Maurice Possley and Steve Mills casts doubt on DeLuna’s guilt and points towards anoth­er man, Carlos Hernandez, who had a record of sim­i­lar crimes and repeat­ed­ly confessed to…

In the wake of numer­ous law­suits chal­leng­ing cur­rent lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures and a recent U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing that makes it eas­i­er for those on death row to file such claims, med­ical experts have iden­ti­fied alter­na­tive pro­to­cols that would be less risky to the pris­on­er but more dif­fi­cult for wit­ness­es to observe. ​“There’s an innu­mer­ably long list of med­ica­tions that can be giv­en to cause some­one to die,” said Dr. Mark Dershwitz, a pro­fes­sor of anes­the­si­ol­o­gy at the University of…

According to the FBI’s Preliminary Uniform Crime Report for 2005, all regions of the coun­try expe­ri­enced a rise in mur­der rates in 2005. The Midwest had the largest increase (5.8%) and the West had the small­est increase (3.2%). Based on the increas­es report­ed by the FBI and the pre­vi­ous year’s mur­der rates, the South again had the high­est mur­der rate in the coun­try– 6.9 mur­ders per 100,000 peo­ple – fol­lowed by the West (5.9), Midwest (5.0) and the Northeast (4.4). The rates for…

The League of Women Voters of the United States has adopt­ed an offi­cial nation­al pol­i­cy call­ing for abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty. During the orga­ni­za­tion’s 47^th bien­ni­al nation­al con­ven­tion in Minneapolis, del­e­gates adopt­ed pol­i­cy language stating, ​“The League of Women Voters of the United States sup­ports the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty.” The League of Women Voters has more than 130,000 mem­bers and sup­port­ers. It is a non-par­ti­san polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion that encour­ages the informed and…

July 2, 2006 will mark the 30^th anniver­sary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Gregg v. Georgia, an his­toric rul­ing that upheld new­ly craft­ed death penal­ty statutes and sig­naled the begin­ning of the mod­ern era of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. This mile­stone presents the pub­lic with an oppor­tu­ni­ty to exam­ine the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty over the past three decades and to test whether the Court’s expec­ta­tion of a fair­er and less arbi­trary sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has been ful­filled. As…

The U.S. Supreme has expand­ed the abil­i­ty of death row inmates to chal­lenge their con­vic­tions in fed­er­al court based on DNA evi­dence pro­duced long after their tri­als. The rul­ing marks the first time that the Justices have con­sid­ered the new evi­den­tiary tech­nol­o­gy of DNA evi­dence when re-exam­­in­ing a death sen­tence. In its 5 – 3 deci­sion, the Court held that new evi­dence, includ­ing DNA test results, raised suf­fi­cient doubt to mer­it a new hear­ing in fed­er­al court for Tennessee death row inmate…

Recent edi­to­ri­als in The Washington Post and Roanoke Times praised Virginia Governor Tim Kaine’s deci­sion to delay the exe­cu­tion of Percy Walton in order to ensure that he is sane enough to exe­cute. The papers not­ed that Kaine’s deci­sion, which drew crit­i­cism from some death penal­ty advo­cates, demonstrated ​“com­pe­tence in law­ful­ly apply­ing the death penal­ty” and was…

The U.S. Supreme Court has unan­i­mous­ly ruled that death row inmates seek­ing to chal­lenge lethal injec­tion as a method of exe­cu­tion after they have exhaust­ed their reg­u­lar appeals may pur­sue the issue as a civ­il rights claim. Though the deci­sion in Hill v. McDonough did not answer the broad­er ques­tion regard­ing whether the chem­i­cals used in lethal injec­tions around the nation are uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because they may cause excru­ci­at­ing pain, it does per­mit inmates to chal­lenge lethal injection…