Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

An edi­to­r­i­al in the Austin-American Statesman praised the rec­om­men­da­tions of the gov­er­nor’s advi­so­ry coun­cil on crim­i­nal jus­tice, espe­cial­ly in regard to changes need­ed in the death penal­ty sys­tem. Excerpts from the editorial appear…

Ruling that the cur­rent mix of drugs used to car­ry out California’s lethal injec­tions may con­sti­tute cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel has ordered California to alter its lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures before it car­ries out the sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Michael Morales on February 21. Fogel, who said he is trou­bled by the prospect that inmates may be con­scious and under­go­ing extreme pain once a par­a­lyz­ing agent and then a heart-stop­ping drug are administered during…

An exhib­it fea­tur­ing artist Taryn Simon’s 45 pho­to­graph­ic por­traits of indi­vid­u­als freed by DNA evi­dence is on dis­play at Provisions Library in Washington, DC, from February 11 to April 15, 2006. During the D.C. exhib­it, which is part of a trav­el­ing exhi­bi­tion curat­ed by Umbrage Editions to mark the 10^th anniver­sary of the New York City-based Innocence Project, a series of relat­ed events will also be offered to more close­ly exam­ine the issue of wrong­ful con­vic­tions. Among the special…

Steven P. Grossman, a for­mer New York City pros­e­cu­tor and a pro­fes­sor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, recent­ly wrote in The Baltimore Sun that the death penalty is ​“not worth the soci­etal effort it requires and the wounds it caus­es.” The case of Maryland death row inmate Vernon Evans,who received a stay jsut pri­or to his sched­uled exe­cu­tion this month, prompt­ed Grossman to exam­ine cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as it relates to vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and whether exe­cu­tions deter future violent…

The most recent edi­tion of the Amicus Journal, a London pub­li­ca­tion that pro­vides a forum for dia­logue on issues con­cern­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment around the world, con­tains arti­cles address­ing U.S. death penal­ty con­cerns. Among the top­ics cov­ered are clemen­cy, men­tal retar­da­tion, con­di­tions on death row, inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel, and lethal injec­tion. The mag­a­zine fea­tures pieces by a num­ber of U.S. death penal­ty experts, includ­ing an essay on clemen­cy by Austin Sarat and a…

Delaware state pros­e­cu­tors announced that they will not seek the death penal­ty for Thomas Capano, a for­mer mil­lion­aire influ­en­tial in state pol­i­tics who was con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Anne Marie Fahey. Capano will instead face a sen­tence of life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. ​“Every crim­i­nal case has a nat­ur­al end. We have reached that point in this case. I am sat­is­fied that jus­tice is served by hav­ing Thomas Capano spend every day of the rest of his life in prison,” said…

An arti­cle in the Science sec­tion of the N.Y. Times reports on research con­duct­ed by psy­chol­o­gists at Stanford University on the effects of exe­cu­tions on prison staff. After inter­view­ing near­ly 250 prison staff mem­bers from three states, the researchers con­clud­ed that those who par­tic­i­pate in exe­cu­tion teams exhib­it high levels of ​“moral dis­en­gage­ment,” which one of the researchers described as the ​“abil­i­ty to selec­tive­ly engage and dis­en­gage our moral stan­dards.” The study found that the…

The Constitution Project​’s blue-rib­bon Death Penalty Initiative released a new report, ​“Mandatory Justice: The Death Penalty Revisited,” an updat­ed set of guid­ing prin­ci­ples for reform of death penal­ty sys­tems. The group is com­prised of cur­rent and for­mer FBI offi­cials, state attor­neys gen­er­al, reli­gious lead­ers, vic­tims of crime, aca­d­e­mics, legal experts, and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers. They iden­ti­fied spe­cif­ic improve­ments to address prob­lems such as arbitrariness,…