Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Homicide fig­ures for New York City show that the num­ber of mur­ders in 2005 may fall below 500, a fig­ure that would be the fewest since 1961 and would bring the city’s mur­der rate below the rate for the nation as a whole. So far this year, ran­dom mur­ders and mur­ders com­mit­ted dur­ing rob­beries and bur­glar­ies have also declined. Experts note that both declines appear to be large­ly attrib­ut­able to a greater police pres­ence, few­er guns, and the decrease in ran­dom vio­lence in the city that came…

Speaking at the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Awards Dinner in Illinois, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said that the death penalty has ​“seri­ous flaws.” He recalled the late Justice Marshall in remark­ing how much the coun­try has learned about the risks in death cases: ​“Since his retire­ment, with the ben­e­fit of DNA evi­dence, we have learned that a sub­stan­tial num­ber of death sen­tences have been imposed erro­neous­ly,” Stevens said dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny. He added that…

In a case that sharply illus­trates the fal­li­bil­i­ty of eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, Miami-Dade pros­e­cu­tors plan to ask a state judge to vacate the con­vic­tions of Luis Diaz based on DNA evi­dence that was not avail­able dur­ing his 1980 tri­al. Though he was short­er and lighter than the man that most wit­ness­es described to police, Diaz was charged with rape 25 years ago after eight women iden­ti­fied him as their attack­er. Following his tri­al, the judge said, ​“I’ve nev­er seen a case where I was more…

In tes­ti­mo­ny before the Massachusetts Joint Committee on the Judiciary regard­ing pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to initiate a ​“fool­proof” death penal­ty, Columbia Law School Professor Jeffrey Fagan (pic­tured) ana­lyzed recent stud­ies that claimed that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment deters mur­ders. He stat­ed that the studies ​“fall apart under close scruti­ny.” Fagan not­ed that the stud­ies are fraught with tech­ni­cal and con­cep­tu­al errors, includ­ing inap­pro­pri­ate meth­ods of sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis, failures…

Thomas Doswell of Pennsylvania and Larry Peterson of New Jersey recent­ly had their con­vic­tions over­turned as a direct result of DNA test­ing. Each defen­dant had serverd 18 years in prison. In Peterson’s case, the pros­e­cu­tion had sought the death penal­ty but the jury could not agree and he was sen­tenced to life. His case marked the first time a New Jersey court has over­turned a con­vic­tion because of DNA evi­dence. Both rever­sals stemmed from the work of attor­neys at the Innocence…

A recent Alabama opin­ion poll found that less than half of those sur­veyed believe Alabama’s death penal­ty is applied fair­ly and 57% of respon­dents sup­port a tem­po­rary halt to exe­cu­tions in the state until ques­tions about fair­ness and reli­a­bil­i­ty are stud­ied. In oth­er find­ings, 96% of those sur­veyed sup­port the use of DNA in cas­es where it might prove guilt or inno­cence and 62% said they would be more like­ly to vote for a can­di­date who sup­port­ed sus­pen­sion of the death penal­ty until questions…

The ded­i­ca­tion of the National Death Penalty Archive at the State University of New York at Albany will take place on August 9, 2005. Hugo Bedau of Tufts University will keynote the pro­gram, which will also fea­ture William J. Bowers, Scott Christianson, David Kaczynski, and Michael Radelet. The Archive is a part­ner­ship between the Capital Punishment Research Initiative at the School of Criminal Justice and the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives at the University of…

The fol­low­ing arti­cle by Henry Weinstein appeared in the Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2005:(DPIC Note: The Senate Judiciary Committee put off markup of the Streamlined Procedures Act, prob­a­bly until September. Also, see Letter from for­mer Attorneys General and pros­e­cu­tors oppos­ing this leg­is­la­tion.)THE NATIONBid to Speed Death Penalty Appeals Under FireConservatives and for­mer pros­e­cu­tors are among foes of a bill, before aSenate pan­el today, to curtail ​‘end­less’ delays in…

In a recent Washington Post col­umn, Richard Cohen com­pared the deep objec­tions voiced by many Americans after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that com­mu­ni­ties can con­demn prop­er­ty in dis­tressed areas to make way for eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment to the tepid reac­tion to strong evi­dence that a Missouri man may have been wrong­ly exe­cut­ed for a crime he did not com­mit. Cohen, not­ing that it seems ​“far eas­i­er for the gov­ern­ment to wrong­ful­ly take a life than a par­cel of run-down real estate,”…