Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The lat­est Gallup Poll found sup­port for the death penal­ty at 74%, a fig­ure equal to the lev­el in 2003 and less than the 80% sup­port reg­is­tered in 1994. The poll found that sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment dropped to 56% when respon­dents were giv­en the alter­na­tive sen­tenc­ing option of life with­out parole, less than the 61% sup­port in 1997 with the same ques­tion. The per­cent­age of respon­dents who believe an inno­cent per­son has been exe­cut­ed in recent years has dropped from 73% in 2003 to 59%…

A diverse and bipar­ti­san group of more than 150 promi­nent North Carolinians have urged the General Assembly to pass a mea­sure that would halt exe­cu­tions for two years while a study com­mis­sion exam­ines the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. A let­ter to the state’s top polit­i­cal lead­ers urg­ing pas­sage of the mora­to­ri­um bill was signed by the group, which includ­ed nine for­mer North Carolina Supreme Court Justices, for­mer pros­e­cu­tors, elect­ed offi­cials, reli­gious lead­ers, busi­ness lead­ers, murder…

A new study from the Texas Defender Service calls for sub­stan­tial changes in the way Texas han­dles cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es. The report rec­om­mends that Texas imple­ment a series of reforms, includ­ing uni­form inves­ti­ga­tion pro­ce­dures, a life-with­­out-parole sen­tenc­ing option, and a statewide pub­lic defend­er’s office. Drawing from rec­om­men­da­tions made by the blue-rib­bon Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment that was estab­lished to address wrong­ful con­vic­tions in that state, the Texas Defender…

A new research paper by Wayne A. Logan of the William Mitchell College of Law exam­ines the con­sti­tu­tion­al, eth­i­cal and legal issues raised by vic­tim impact evi­dence. In his article, ​“Victims, Survivors and the Decisions to Seek and Impose Death,” Logan notes that the U.S. Supreme Court’s land­mark 1991 deci­sion in Payne v. Tennessee opened the door for sur­vivors of mur­der vic­tims to tes­ti­fy about the social, emo­tion­al, and eco­nom­ic loss­es result­ing from the mur­der of their loved one. Since…

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An inde­pen­dent audit of Virginia’s cen­tral crime lab­o­ra­to­ry ini­ti­at­ed by the present gov­er­nor found that the lab had botched DNA tests in the death penal­ty case of Earl Washington (pic­tured). The find­ing prompt­ed Gov. Mark Warner to order a review of 150 oth­er crim­i­nal cas­es and the devel­op­ment of pro­ce­dures to insu­late the lab from out­side polit­i­cal pres­sures. The audit was con­duct­ed by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors. It found that the Virginia lab’s internal review…

In the course of its research, DPIC col­lects rel­e­vant death penal­ty arti­cles that have appeared in print and on media Web sites. Our col­lec­tion cer­tain­ly does not con­tain all such arti­cles, nor do we claim that it represents the ​“best” arti­cles. It is only a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of the exten­sive cov­er­age giv­en to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in print in a par­tic­u­lar year. For those inter­est­ed in exam­in­ing this cov­er­age, we have pre­pared an index of the arti­cles from 2004 in PDF for­mat. For more…

Public sup­port for the death penal­ty has dropped sharply in Houston, Texas accord­ing to the 2005 Houston Area Survey con­duct­ed by Rice University. For many years Texas has led the coun­try in exe­cu­tions, and Harris County (Houston) has led all Texas coun­ties in send­ing inmates to death row and in exe­cu­tions. But most Houston res­i­dents would pre­fer the sen­tence of life with­out parole rather than the death penal­ty for those who commit…

In a com­pre­hen­sive study cov­er­ing 20 years and thou­sands of cap­i­tal cas­es in Ohio, the Associated Press found that the death penal­ty has been applied in an uneven and often arbi­trary fash­ion. Among the con­clu­sions of the study that ana­lyzed 1,936 indict­ments report­ed to the Ohio Supreme Court by coun­ties with cap­i­tal cas­es from October 1981 through 2002…