Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The lat­est edi­tion of Christian Networks Journal fea­tures a series of arti­cles under the theme ​“Shalt Thou Kill?: An In-Depth Look at Capital Punishment.” In addi­tion to com­men­tary from two for­mer gov­er­nors and arti­cles by death penal­ty experts Franklin Zimring, Rob Warden, David Dow, and DPIC Executive Director Richard Dieter (on Costs), the mag­a­zine also con­tains inter­views and death row sto­ries. The mag­a­zine states that its purpose is ​“to pro­vide hon­est, lev­el and unbiased…

In its first death penal­ty case this term, the U.S. Supreme Court heard argu­ments in Brown v. Sanders, a California case in which the Justices con­sid­ered whether Ronald Sanders was wrong­ly sen­tenced to die by jurors who relied on invalid aggra­vat­ing fac­tors. Sanders was sen­tenced to death in 1982. The jury found four of the ​“spe­cial cir­cum­stances” required in California and some oth­er states for a defen­dant to be eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. Two of those aggra­vat­ing factors were…

October 10^th was World Day Against the Death Penalty, an occas­sion that Amnesty International used to urge abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in all African states. Amnesty offi­cials not­ed that recent devel­op­ments show a trend toward death penal­ty abo­li­tion among African coun­tries, and they stat­ed that the major­i­ty of the con­ti­nen­t’s nations have aban­doned using cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Senegal abol­ished the death penal­ty for all crimes in December 2004 and Liberia in September 2005. In March…

A jury in Arizona acquit­ted Christopher Huerstel of first-degree mur­der and of attempt­ed armed rob­bery of a Tucson pizze­ria in which 3 peo­ple were killed. Huerstel, who was 17-years-old at the time the crime was com­mit­ted, was orig­nal­ly con­vict­ed along with a co-defen­­dant and both were sen­tenced to death in 2001. His con­vic­tion was over­turned by the Arizona Supreme Court because of errors by the tri­al judge. The jury at the re-tri­al was unable to reach a ver­dict on second-degree…

Ruling that jurors in the most recent retri­al of Johnny Paul Penry may not have prop­er­ly con­sid­ered his claims of men­tal impair­ment, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals sent Penry’s case back for re-sen­­tenc­ing. The Texas court’s deci­sion marks the third time that Penry’s death sen­tence has been over­turned dur­ing the past 16 years. The U.S. Supreme Court over­turned his cap­i­tal con­vic­tion in 1989 in Penry v. Lynaugh, a deci­sion uphold­ing the exe­cu­tion of defen­dants with mental…

In a dis­sent­ing opin­ion filed in the cap­i­tal case of Moore v. Parker, Judge Boyce Martin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit wrote that ​“the death penal­ty in this coun­try is arbi­trary, biased, and so fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed at its very core that it is beyond repair.” Among his many crit­i­cisms of the way cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is applied in the U.S., Martin specif­i­cal­ly not­ed his con­cerns about the issues of inno­cence, inad­e­quate defense coun­sel, and the over­all arbitrariness of…

A new study by a team of researchers at the New York Times looks at the expand­ing use of life sen­tences in the American crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The study, head­ed by Times reporter Adam Liptak, found that about 132,000 of the nation’s pris­on­ers, or almost 10%, are serv­ing life sen­tences. Of those, 28% have life sen­tences with no chance of parole. This is a marked increase from a 1993 Times study that found 20% of all lif­ers had no chance of parole. Liptak also report­ed that about 9,700 people…

Karla, a new play by singer and song­writer Steve Earle will open at the 45 Bleecker St. Theatre on October 20 in New York City. The play tells the life sto­ry of Karla Faye Tucker, the first woman exe­cut­ed in Texas since the Civil War. She was exe­cut­ed by lethal injec­tion in 1998 while George W. Bush was gov­er­nor, despite her obvi­ous reha­bil­i­ta­tion and oppo­si­tion from a broad spec­trum of nation­al and inter­na­tion­al lead­ers. The play is being pre­sent­ed by The Culture Project, which…

The entire cur­rent edi­tion of Congressional Quarterly’s CQ Researcher is devot­ed to a com­pre­hen­sive look at the death penal­ty in the U.S. This spe­cial CQ report, authored by Kenneth Jost and entitled ​“Death Penalty Controversies,” explores the his­to­ry of the U.S. death penal­ty and chang­ing pub­lic opin­ion about its use. It also looks at the cur­rent sta­tus of state mora­to­ri­um devel­op­ments, the con­tin­u­ing decline in U.S. exe­cu­tions, state respons­es to the Supreme Court’s ban on…

RACE AND THE DEATH PENALTY IN CALIFORNIA A recent study to be pub­lished in the Santa Clara Law Review found that the race of the vic­tim in the under­ly­ing mur­der great­ly affect­ed whether a defen­dant would be sen­tenced to death.Generally, there are more Hispanic and African American vic­tims of mur­der in California: –California Murder Victims 1990 – 1999 — Office of Vital Statistics; based on mur­ders where race of vic­tim was known; Whites, African American, and Other are…