Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Several pro­vi­sions con­tained with­in the U.S. House of Representatives ver­sion of leg­is­la­tion to reau­tho­rize the USA Patriot Act anti-ter­ror­ism law aim to dra­mat­i­cal­ly trans­form the fed­er­al death penal­ty sys­tem by allow­ing small­er juries to decide on exe­cu­tions and giv­ing pros­e­cu­tors the abil­i­ty to try again if the jury dead­locks on sen­tenc­ing. The leg­isla­tive changes, spon­sored by Texas Congressman John Carter, would also triple the num­ber of ter­ror­ism-relat­ed crimes eli­gi­ble for the death…

The Death Penalty: Constitutional Issues, Commentaries and Case Briefs is a new text­book that brings togeth­er many of the legal issues of the death penal­ty and presents them in an easy-to-digest form. The book pro­vides a brief ret­ro­spec­tive analy­sis of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment over the past two cen­turies, and then details the cur­rent sta­tus of the U.S. death penal­ty. With a chap­ter that focus­es on the U.S. Supreme Court cas­es Furman v. Georgia and Gregg v. Georgia, as well as chap­ters on race, the…

According to a new report released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), struc­tur­al and pro­ce­dur­al flaws in Alabama’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem stack the deck against fair tri­als and appro­pri­ate sen­tenc­ing for those fac­ing the death penal­ty. The report, Broken Justice: The Death Penalty in Alabama, details unfair and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices in the state’s admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty. It con­cen­trates on six major areas of con­cern: inad­e­quate defense, prosecutorial misconduct,…

Even as the use of the death penal­ty con­tin­ued to decline in the United States, the num­ber of mur­ders and the nation­al mur­der rate dropped in 2004. According to the recent­ly released FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2004, the nation’s mur­der rate fell by 3.3%, declin­ing to 5.5 mur­ders per 100,000 peo­ple in 2004. By region, the Northeast, which accounts for less than 1% of all U.S. exe­cu­tions, con­tin­ued to have the nation’s low­est mur­der rate, 4.2. The Midwest had a mur­der rate of 4.7, and the…

Various courts issued rul­ings this week regard­ing issues impor­tant to capital punishment…

Clarence David Hill (pic­tured) has been freed after spend­ing near­ly 16 years on Arizona’s death row. Hill, who is ter­mi­nal­ly ill, recent­ly had his 1^st-degree mur­der con­vic­tion and death sen­tence over­turned. Though he main­tains his inno­cence in the 1989 mur­der of his land­lord, Hill chose to avoid the prospect of a new tri­al by accept­ing an agree­ment that allowed him to plead guilty to 2^nd-degree mur­der and be sen­tenced to time already served. Hill’s attor­ney not­ed that his client only took the…

A pros­e­cu­tor train­ing video­tape fea­tur­ing for­mer Philadelphia assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney Jack McMahon dis­cussing tech­niques to keep African Americans off of juries has result­ed in yet anoth­er mur­der con­vic­tion rever­sal. Noting that the tape is ​“com­pelling evi­dence” that McMahon ​“reg­u­lar­ly act­ed with dis­crim­i­na­to­ry ani­mus toward African-American jurors,” a prac­tice made uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1986 deci­sion in Batson v. Kentucky, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3^rd…

The lat­est edi­tion of the mag­a­zine Justice Denied fea­tures sto­ries of those who have been wrong­ly con­vict­ed in the United States and inter­na­tion­al­ly, includ­ing sev­er­al death penal­ty cas­es. One arti­cle is about Lena Baker, who was posthu­mous­ly par­doned 50 years after Georgia exe­cut­ed her for the mur­der Ernest B. Knight. The mag­a­inze also fea­tures a sto­ry about the inno­cence claims raised by Frances Newton, who was recent­ly exe­cut­ed in Texas. Other arti­cles dis­cuss the Streamlined…

A mil­i­tary jury unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed for a death sen­tence for U.S. Airman Andrew Witt in Georgia on October 13, 2005 fol­low­ing his con­vic­tion in the mur­ders of anoth­er mil­i­tary offi­cer and his spouse. The mur­ders took place at Robins Air Force Base and stemmed from an inter­per­son­al dis­pute. The ver­dict and sen­tence now go before Maj. Gen. Michael Collings, com­man­der of the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center at Robins. Collings has the author­i­ty to uphold or mod­i­fy the verdict and…

In a recent opin­ion address­ing sev­er­al pro­ce­dur­al issues regard­ing the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment law, the Florida Supreme Court urged state leg­is­la­tors to require cap­i­tal jurors to be unan­i­mous in rec­om­mend­ing death sen­tences or at least in decid­ing what aggra­vat­ing fac­tors sup­port a death sentence. ​“The bot­tom line is that Florida is now the only state in the coun­try that allows the death penal­ty to be imposed even though the penal­­ty-phase jury may deter­mine by a mere major­i­ty vote both…