Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a long time sup­port­er of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, called for New York’s leg­is­la­ture to step back and more thor­ough­ly review the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem, which has not result­ed in any exe­cu­tions and has cost the state more than $170 mil­lion in the last decade. Speaker Silver said that his cham­ber would not fol­low the lead of the state Senate, which passed an amend­ment to fix the state’s death penal­ty law without hearings.

The Death Penatly Information Center has issued a new report, Innocence and the Crisis in the American Death Penalty, cat­a­loging 116 cas­es of for­mer death row inmates who have been exon­er­at­ed in 25 states since 1973. The report also notes that as the num­ber of inno­cent peo­ple freed from death row has risen and become more pub­lic in recent years, there has been a dra­mat­ic drop in death sen­tences around the coun­try. The num­ber of death sen­tences, which have been…

A new biog­ra­phy by Tim Junkin enti­tled Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA recounts the events that led first to the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence, and then to the free­ing of Kirk Bloodsworth for the mur­der of a nine-year-old girl in Maryland. Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking describes the book as​“Chilling, heart­break­ing, and ulti­mate­ly inspir­ing.” Scott Turow says:​“Bloodsworth is a tale of courage and…

Thomas F. Kelaher, the new pres­i­dent of the County Prosecutors Association of New Jersey, said that it is time to start rethink­ing the use of the death penal­ty in the state. Although Kelaher is a sup­port­er of the death penal­ty, he noted: ​“If the death penal­ty has­n’t been used in 20 years, soci­ety should ask if it should be con­tin­ued. It was sup­posed to act as a deter­rent. If it has­n’t been used in 20 years, you real­ly can’t say it’s a deter­rent.” Kelaher…

Presentations at DePaul University’s sym­po­sium on Race and the Death Penalty were recent­ly pub­lished in the university’s Law Review. National experts exam­ined sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence and atti­tudes regard­ing race dis­crim­i­na­tion in the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. A keynote address was deliv­ered by Bryan Stevenson, Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, and for­mer Governor George Ryan gave the clos­ing remarks. To read DPIC​’s sum­ma­ry of the articles…

Despite broad bipar­ti­san Congressional sup­port for the Advancing Justice Through DNA Technology Act, which includes the​“Innocence Protection Act” (IPA) to help states pay for the costs of post-con­vic­­­tion DNA test­ing, the Senate Judiciary Committee has delayed action on the bill. Kirk Bloodsworth (pic­tured), whose name accom­pa­nies the IPA, urged Congress to act:​“Nobody should have to wait for jus­tice. I strug­gled for near­ly 20 years to clear my name. This legislation will…

A fed­er­al judge has over­turned one of California’s old­est death sen­tences based on his find­ing that the 1979 tri­al of Earl Lloyd Jackson was taint­ed by unre­li­able jail­house infor­mants and poor representation. ​“The spe­cial cir­cum­stance find­ing and the death sen­tences in this case rest on an evi­den­tiary foun­da­tion con­struct­ed large­ly from the false tes­ti­mo­ny of two jail­house infor­mants,” wrote U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie in his rul­ing. Rafeedie…

The University of Cincinnati’s Center for Law and Justice will be inau­gu­rat­ing its Innocence Week begin­ning September 14^th. The week of activ­i­ties cen­tered on wrong­ful con­vic­tions will include a pre­sen­ta­tion by Scott Hornoff, a police offi­cer from Rhode Island who was wrong­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der before being freed on the basis of DNA, pre­sen­ta­tions by DNA expert Barry Scheck, and per­for­mances of the award-win­n­ing play The Exonerated. The Center for Law and…

Of the 63 death sen­tences hand­ed down since New Jersey rein­stat­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1982, 47 have been over­turned, includ­ing that of Robert Marshall, whose death sen­tence was reversed on April 8^th by a fed­er­al court. Marshall had been on New Jersey’s death row longer than any oth­er inmate pri­or to the vacat­ing of his sen­tence. New Jersey has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since bring­ing back the death penal­ty. It cur­rent­ly has 11 inmates on death row, and no…

The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 2002 con­tains its lat­est cat­a­log of data on crime, the admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, and pub­lic atti­tudes toward crim­i­nal jus­tice issues such as the death penal­ty. For exam­ple, a grow­ing num­ber of Americans sup­port the sen­tence of life with­out parole over the death penal­ty. In 1985, a Gallup Poll found that 34% of those polled favored life in prison with­out parole. This latest…