Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In a pro­posed amend­ment to its penal code, Indian lead­ers are seek­ing to imple­ment a change that would end the nation’s death penalty even ​“in the rarest of rare” cas­es. The amend­ed Indian Penal Code would abol­ish the death penal­ty and replace it with a strict life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole mea­sure. Currently, the nation’s life sen­tence statute only requires impris­on­ment for 14 years. The deci­sion to seek an offi­cial end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ful­fills a pledge made by the chairman of…

On May 31, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to con­sid­er the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Kansas’ death penal­ty law. The cur­rent statute requires that a death sen­tence be imposed when a jury finds that the aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the crime have equal weight (i.e., a tie results in death). When review­ing Michael Marsh’s death sen­tence in 2004, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the state’s statute was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, hold­ing that the above process did not…

The North Carolina House of Representatives will soon vote on a two-year mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the state while the death penal­ty is stud­ied. A mora­to­ri­um bill passed the full Senate in 2003, but had been pre­vi­ous­ly blocked from com­ing to a vote in the House. The House Judiciary Committee will like­ly con­sid­er the mora­to­ri­um mea­sure on Tuesday, May 31. The com­mit­tee’s approval could mean a full House vote on the leg­is­la­tion as ear­ly as that same day. The full House is then required to…

By a vote of 104 – 37, mem­bers of the Texas House of Representatives ten­ta­tive­ly approved the sen­tenc­ing option of life-with­­out-parole in death penal­ty cas­es, an his­toric action that puts the state clos­er to includ­ing a sen­tenc­ing alter­na­tive offered in near­ly every death penal­ty state. The House is expect­ed to give final pas­sage to the mea­sure on May 25 and the Texas Senate, which passed sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion ear­li­er this year, is expect­ed to approve an amend­ed mea­sure before send­ing the bill to…

In its annu­al report on human rights around the world, Amnesty International not­ed the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in five nations in 2004. Last year, Bhutan, Greece, Samoa, Senegal and Turkey joined a grow­ing list of coun­tries that have aban­doned cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for all crimes. The report stat­ed that such changes are pos­i­tive signs, noting: ​“Global activism is a dynam­ic and grow­ing force. It is also the best hope of achiev­ing free­dom and jus­tice for all human­i­ty.” The report cov­ers 149…

The May/​June issue of Foreign Policy mag­a­zine includes an arti­cle on the death penal­ty in Japan by Charles Lane, Supreme Court reporter for The Washington Post. Lane notes that Japan’s death penal­ty is shroud­ed in secre­cy and cul­mi­nates in exe­cu­tions out­side of all pub­lic view. He pro­vides read­ers with a rare look inside this sys­tem and com­pares that coun­try’s poli­cies with U.S. prac­tices and inter­na­tion­al trends. The article, ​“A View to a Kill,” notes that although death sentences are…

The Supreme Court today dismissed as ​“improv­i­dent­ly grant­ed” the case of Jose Medellin, a Mexican nation­al on death row in Texas pri­mar­i­ly because President Bush has interevened and ordered state courts to abide by a rul­ing from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In an unsigned deci­sion, the Justices decid­ed not to review this case as a mat­ter of fed­er­al habeas cor­pus law. They did note, how­ev­er, that once this mat­ter is reviewed in Texas state courts, the U.S. Supreme Court ​“would in…

SUPREME COURT DECLINES TO RULE ON RIGHTS OF FOREIGN NATIONALS ON DEATH ROW The Supreme Court today dismissed as ​“improv­i­dent­ly grant­ed” the case of Jose Medellin, a Mexican nation­al on death row in Texas. In an unsigned deci­sion, jus­tices dis­missed as pre­ma­ture the case in which Medellin argued that an opin­ion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) enti­tled him and the 50 Mexican for­eign nation­als on death row in the United States to a hear­ing on whether their rights were violated under…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that a man whose attor­ney slept through por­tions of his 1992 death penal­ty tri­al should not get a new tri­al because he had anoth­er less expe­ri­enced attor­ney who remained awake. In its rul­ing, the Court denied George McFarland’s claim of inef­fec­tive­ness of coun­sel and upheld his death sentence. ​“We con­clude that, although one of his attor­neys slept through por­tions of his tri­al, appli­cant was not deprived of the assis­tance of coun­sel under the…