Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has reversed the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Curtis Edward McCarty because the state’s case was large­ly based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of a police chemist who has since been fired for shod­dy and unre­li­able lab work. The court ordered a new tri­al for McCarty, who has been on death row more than two decades for a 1982 mur­der. At issue is the expert tes­ti­mo­ny of for­mer Oklahoma City police chemist Joyce Gilchrist dur­ing McCarty’s cap­i­tal tri­al. Gilchrist had…

Newspaper edi­to­ri­als from papers in Texas and oth­er areas of the coun­try praised the Supreme Court’s rul­ing in the case of Thomas Miller-El and crit­i­cized the way in which the death penal­ty has been imple­ment­ed in Texas. Miller-El was grant­ed a new tri­al in light of strong evi­dence of racial bias dur­ing jury selec­tion at his orig­i­nal tri­al. Editorial excerpts follow:New York Times[Miller-El] is an impor­tant rul­ing that reit­er­ates to all courts the impor­tance of keep­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion out of…

In a 6 – 3 deci­sion, the Supreme Court ruled that Thomas Miller-El, a Texas death row inmate, is enti­tled to a new tri­al in light of strong evi­dence of racial bias dur­ing jury selec­tion at his orig­i­nal tri­al. In choos­ing a jury to try Miller-El, a black defen­dant, pros­e­cu­tors struck 10 of the 11 qual­i­fied black pan­elists. The Supreme Court said that the deci­sion by the Texas court find­ing no dis­crim­i­na­tion in the process ​“blinks real­i­ty” and was unrea­son­able and erro­neous in light of the…

According to the lat­est edi­tion of Death Row USA pub­lished by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), the size of death row decreased again as of April 1, 2005. After increas­ing steadi­ly for about 25 years, the death row pop­u­la­tion start­ed decreas­ing in 2000. The cur­rent total for state and fed­er­al death rows is 3,452. On October 1, 2002, LDF report­ed a death row pop­u­la­tion of 3,697. This lat­est report counts 72 offend­ers who were juve­niles at the time of their crime,…

Kenyan Justice Minister Kiraitu Murungi announced that those on the nation’s death row will soon have their sen­tences com­mut­ed to life impris­on­ment. Murungi not­ed that he is work­ing close­ly with Kenya’s President’s Office to bring the nation into com­pli­ance with its oblig­a­tions under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. ​“We are com­mit­ted to abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty. The death sen­tence is a vio­la­tion of the right to life,” he said. In the 1970s, Kenya argued…

“Hidden Victims,” a new book by soci­ol­o­gist Susan F. Sharp of the University of Oklahoma, exam­ines the impact of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment on the fam­i­lies of those fac­ing exe­cu­tion. Through a series of in-depth inter­views with fam­i­lies of the accused, Sharp illus­trates from a soci­o­log­i­cal stand­point how fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends of those on death row are, in effect, indi­rect vic­tims of the ini­tial crime. The book empha­sizes their respons­es to sen­tenc­ing, as well as how they grieve and face an…

Preliminary data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 2004 found that mur­ders in the U. S. dropped last year by 3.6%. The num­ber of exe­cu­tions also declined in 2004. In 2003, the South had the high­est mur­der rate in the coun­try, and that appeared to con­tin­ue in 2004 even as the South car­ried out 85% of the nation’s exe­cu­tions. The Northeast, which had no exe­cu­tions in 2004, had the low­est mur­der rate in 2003 and that posi­tion appeared to remain the same in 2004. The FBI’s final…

In its recent study of Ohio’s death penal­ty, the Associated Press found that of the 1,936 cap­i­tal indict­ments filed statewide from 1981 – 2002, about 50% end­ed in plea bar­gains. Of those cas­es, 131 peo­ple who plead­ed guilty in exchange for escap­ing the death penal­ty were charged with killing mul­ti­ple vic­tims. By con­trast, 196 of the 274 peo­ple who were sen­tenced to death row dur­ing the same 21-year time span were con­vict­ed of killing a sin­gle vic­tim. The AP’s Ohio find­ings were similar to…

Death row inmates from around the coun­try will present a $5,000 col­lege schol­ar­ship to Zach Osborne, the broth­er of a 4‑year-old mur­der vic­tim, who plans to attend East Carolina University to pur­sue a career in law enforce­ment. The schol­ar­ship is an annu­al award giv­en by those on death row who par­tic­i­pate in the publication of ​“Compassion,” a newslet­ter that pro­vides a forum for com­mu­ni­ca­tion between con­vict­ed offend­ers and mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. Each year, a mur­der vic­tim’s family member…

A recent inves­ti­ga­tion led by a for­mer Justice Department offi­cial report­ed that ana­lysts at the Houston Crime Lab fab­ri­cat­ed find­ings in at least four drug cas­es, includ­ing one in which a sci­en­tist failed to con­duct test­ing before issu­ing con­clu­sions to sup­port police sus­pi­cions — an ille­gal prac­tice known as ​“dry­lab­bing.” The report con­tains some of the most seri­ous alle­ga­tions made yet against the Houston Crime Lab and is the first to crit­i­cize the lab’s largest divi­sion, controlled…