Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The cap­i­tal con­vic­tions of dozens of peo­ple from Alameda County, California are com­ing under legal scruti­ny because of an accu­sa­tion that Jews and black women were exclud­ed from juries in cap­i­tal tri­als in the county as ​“stan­dard prac­tice.” The prac­tice was revealed in a sworn dec­la­ra­tion by for­mer Alameda pros­e­cu­tor John R. Quatman in the habeas cor­pus pro­ceed­ings of Fred Freeman, a man on California’s death row who is seek­ing to have his con­vic­tion over­turned. Quatman not­ed that the judge…

A recent Mason-Dixon Polling & Research sur­vey of Maryland vot­ers found that 63% believe that life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole is an accept­able sub­sti­tute for the death penal­ty. Only 21% stat­ed that they believe it is not an accept­able alter­na­tive to the death penal­ty, and 16% were not sure. The poll, spon­sored by the Maryland Catholic Conference, revealed that among women, 66% believe the alter­na­tive sen­tence of life with­out parole is an accept­able sub­sti­tute for capital…

In an his­toric move to ensure that Texas fair­ly applies the death penal­ty and that defen­dants are afford­ed prop­er legal pro­tec­tions to prove their inno­cence, Texas Governor Rick Perry appoint­ed a nine-mem­ber spe­cial coun­cil with sweep­ing pow­ers to review an array of legal issues rang­ing from police inves­ti­ga­tions to court appeals. The appoint­ment of the pan­el is the first acton of its kind by a Texas gov­er­nor in decades. ​“I have great con­fi­dence in our jus­tice sys­tem, but no system is…

By a vote of 25 – 15, mem­bers of the Connecticut Judiciary Committee vot­ed for leg­is­la­tion to repeal the state’s death penal­ty and replace it with life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, an action that clears the way for the House to debate the mea­sure. Supporters of the bill say that the state’s death penal­ty is an unen­force­able statute, a source of agony for fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims, and a fis­cal bur­den the state can no longer afford to bear. ​“We should not be debat­ing spend­ing $3…

The Bush admin­is­tra­tion has pulled out of the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, an inter­na­tion­al agree­ment that has been in place for more than 30 years and that the United States ini­tial­ly sup­port­ed to pro­tect its cit­i­zens abroad. In recent years, the pro­vi­sion has been suc­cess­ful­ly invoked by for­eign nations whose cit­i­zens were sen­tenced to death by U.S. states with­out receiv­ing access to diplo­mats from their home coun­tries, events which served as the basis…

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On February 28, 2005, Ohio Common Pleas Judge Richard Niehaus dis­missed all charges against Derrick Jamison for the death of a Cincinnati bar­tender after pros­e­cu­tors elect­ed not to retry him in the case. (Associated Press, March 3, 2005). The pros­e­cu­tion had with­held crit­i­cal eye­wit­ness state­ments and oth­er evi­dence from the defense result­ing in the over­turn­ing of Jamison’s con­vic­tion in 2002. Jamison was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1985 based in part on the tes­ti­mo­ny of Charles…

SUPREME COURT BANS EXECUTION OF JUVENILE OFFENDERS On March 1, 2005, the Court held that the Eighth Amendment for­bids impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty on offend­ers who were under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes. Below are exceprts from the opin­ion: “[T]he objec­tive indi­cia of con­sen­sus in this case — the rejec­tion of the juve­nile death penal­ty in the major­i­ty of States; the infre­quen­cy of its use even where it remains on the books; and the con­sis­ten­cy in the trend toward abolition of…

A recent arti­cle in the Wayne Law Review by Prof. Phillys L. Crocker of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law exam­ines the Supreme Court’s strug­gle with the issue of death row inmates waiv­ing their appeals. Crocker uses Rees v. Peyton, a cap­i­tal case that remained on the Court’s dock­et from 1965 – 1995, to explore the issue. In that case, Virginia death row inmate Melvin Rees sought to with­draw his peti­tion for a writ of cer­tio­rari so that he could be exe­cut­ed. In 1967, the Supreme Court stayed…

According to state and fed­er­al records obtained by The Los Angeles Times, main­tain­ing the California death penal­ty sys­tem costs tax­pay­ers more than $114 mil­lion a year beyond the cost of sim­ply keep­ing the con­victs locked up for life. This fig­ure does not count the mil­lions more spent on court costs to pros­e­cute cap­i­tal cas­es. The Times con­clud­ed that Californians and fed­er­al tax­pay­ers have paid more than a quar­ter of a bil­lion dol­lars for each of the state’s 11 exe­cu­tions, and that it costs…