Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The North Carolina State bar has rep­ri­mand­ed two for­mer assis­tant attor­ney gen­er­als for with­hold­ing evi­dence that could have pre­vent­ed the wrong­ful con­vic­tion of Alan Gell, who was final­ly freed from death row in 2004 (pic­tured). The State Bar pan­el found that pros­e­cu­tors David Hoke and Debra Graves failed to turn over evi­dence to Gell, did not ade­quate­ly super­vise the con­duct of their chief inves­ti­ga­tor for the case, and brought the judi­cial system into…

When Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was a sen­a­tor in Arizona, one of the peo­ple she asked to draft the state’s death penal­ty law was Rudolph Gerber. She request­ed that he​“write a law we can live with.” Mr. Gerber went on to become a pros­e­cu­tor, an Arizona tri­al judge, and even­tu­al­ly a judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals for 13 years. He recent­ly expressed his chang­ing views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as he expe­ri­enced how the law was put into prac­tice:​“My expe­ri­ence, not…

Articles from a symposium entitled ​“Rethinking the Death Penalty: Can We Define Who Deserves Death?” can be found in the Fall 2003 edi­tion of the Pace Law Review. The sym­po­sium, host­ed by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York in May 2002, fea­tured speak­ers Robert Blecker, Jeffrey Kirchmeier, the Honorable William Erlbaum, David Von Drehle, and Jeffrey Fagan. The speak­ers addressed the ques­tion of whether it is pos­si­ble to lim­it the death penal­ty to the…

The American Correctional Association has recent­ly pub­lished the pro­ceed­ings of their 2003 Annual Conference in Nashville con­tain­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion by DPIC Executive Director Richard Dieter on the death penal­ty. The text of the speech is avail­able on DPIC​’s site, click here. The full pub­li­ca­tion is avail­able from the ACA, and also con­tains remarks on the death penal­ty by Prof. John McAdams of Marquette. (The State of Corrections: 2003 Proceedings, ACA Annual…

A new report by The Sentencing Project,​“The Vanishing Black Electorate: Felony Disenfranchisement in Atlanta, Georgia,” exam­ines the racial effects of depriv­ing cit­i­zens of vot­ing rights because of crim­i­nal con­vic­tions. The report reveals sharp dis­par­i­ties in vot­ing eli­gi­bil­i­ty by race and neigh­bor­hood. Among the report’s key find­ings are the…

Just one day after the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee passed the ​“Advancing Justice Through DNA Technology Act,” a mea­sure that includes the Innocence Protection Act and that ensures access to post-con­vic­­­tion DNA test­ing for those in prison with claims of inno­cence, the bill has been incor­po­rat­ed into leg­is­la­tion intro­duced in the House Judiciary Committee. As part of the​“Justice for All Act of 2004,” the DNA bill is antic­i­pat­ed to quick­ly advance to the…

An autop­sy of the last man exe­cut­ed in Kentucky, Edward L. Harper, found only 3 to 6.5 mil­ligrams per liter of bar­bi­tu­rate in Harper’s blood – a lev­el leav­ing a high chance that Harper was con­scious through­out the exe­cu­tion and that he felt pain when he was inject­ed with sub­se­quent drugs that par­a­lyzed and suf­fo­cat­ed him, and then stopped his heart. Dr. Mark Dershwitz, the pros­e­cu­tion expert who devel­oped the stan­dards that Kentucky relies upon, said the low level…

A new report from the Washington Death Penalty Assistance Center reviews the effi­cien­cy of Washington State’s death penal­ty sys­tem. The report includes an overview of Washington’s statute and an expla­na­tion of the dif­fer­ences between cap­i­tal and non-cap­i­­­tal cas­es, demon­strat­ing why cap­i­tal cas­es require sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater resources. The authors report that: o Of death penal­ty cas­es that com­plet­ed the appeals process, 81% were over­turned after errors were found.

In the lat­est National Crime Victimization Survey, the Bureau of Justice Statistics report­ed that the U.S. mur­der rate for 2003 was about 5.6 per 100,000 per­sons, unchanged from 2001 and 2002. Of the vic­tims of mur­der, approx­i­mate­ly 49% were white and 49% were black. (DPIC note: While the report found that the race of vic­tims is even­ly split nation­al­ly, vic­tims in death penal­ty cas­es are most­ly white (about 81%)). In mur­der cas­es, 76% of the offend­ers were known to the…