Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In his Scientific American mag­a­zine arti­cle enti­tled, ​“The Case of the Unsolved Crime Decline,” crim­i­nol­o­gist Richard Rosenfeld exam­ines why U.S. crime rates dropped more than 40% in the 1990​’s and what lessons cur­rent pol­i­­cy-mak­ers can learn from this decline. Rosenfeld pro­vides an overview and eval­u­a­tion of pre­vi­ous research show­ing a link in the crime rate decline and fac­tors such as changes in demo­graph­ics, law-enforce­­ment prac­tices, eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, incarceration rates,…

A broad spec­trum of the pub­lic is seek­ing clemen­cy for Texas death row inmate James Allridge, who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on Thursday, August 26^th. Among those point­ing to Allridge’s reha­bil­i­ta­tion as the basis for mer­cy are four of the orig­i­nal jurors in his tri­al, two for­mer death row prison guards, a retired prison sys­tem admin­is­tra­tor, a Fort Worth city coun­cil­man, one of Allridge’s for­mer employ­ers, and mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers. The sup­port­ers state that since Aldridge…

The Summer 2004 DePaul Law Review con­tains pre­sen­ta­tions and arti­cles from the University’s two-day ​“Race to Execution” Symposium, an event that fea­tured remarks and pre­sen­ta­tions from some of the nation’s most renowned death penal­ty experts. This law review exam­ines the role that race has his­tor­i­cal­ly had and con­tin­ues to play in our nation’s death penal­ty debate. Among the arti­cles are pre­sen­ta­tions exam­in­ing the racial bias in cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing, how implic­it racial attitudes of…

Professor James R. Eisenberg’s new book, ​“Law, Psychology, and Death Penalty Litigation,” pro­vides a thor­ough intro­duc­tion to the role that foren­sic psy­chol­o­gy plays in cap­i­tal tri­als. Using a step-by-step approach that cov­ers the his­tor­i­cal and cur­rent legal con­text of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, Eisenberg describes the var­i­ous tasks that might con­front the foren­sic psy­chol­o­gist in a death penal­ty tri­al, includ­ing issues of com­pe­ten­cy to be exe­cut­ed, men­tal retar­da­tion, risk assess­ment, and…

A recent Albany Times Union edi­to­r­i­al called on state leg­is­la­tors to aban­don attempts to rein­state New York’s death penal­ty, which the state’s high­est court found uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because the statute’s jury instruc­tions could be coer­cive. The June 24^th New York Court of Appeals rul­ing in People v. Stephen LaValle spurred pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to rem­e­dy the statute. Some legal crit­ics who have exam­ined the new bill say that it may also be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The edi­to­r­i­al echoed this sentiment,…

In his new book ​“Jurors’ Stories of Death: How America’s Death Penalty Invests in Inequality,” author Benjamin Fleury-Steiner draws on real-life accounts of white and black jurors in cap­i­tal tri­als to dis­cuss the effect of race on the sen­tenc­ing process. Through his sur­vey of the jurors’ expe­ri­ences, he reveals that race is often a fac­tor in sen­tenc­ing and that the U.S. jus­tice sys­tem can foster an ​“us ver­sus them” men­tal­i­ty among jurors serv­ing in cap­i­tal tri­als. Fleury-Steiner finds…

Expressing their desire to end emo­tion­al­ly strain­ing court pro­ceed­ings, the fam­i­lies of Maryland mur­der victims Betina ​“Kristi” Gentry and Cynthia V. Allen recent­ly urged Anne Arundel County’s top pros­e­cu­tor to end his 3^rd attempt to get a death sen­tence for the man accused of killing the two women 10 years ago. ​“They’ve been through so much. I can’t look them in the eye and say, ​‘Nah, you have to relive it again.’ I can’t do that,” said State’s Attorney Frank R. Weathersbee after agreeing to…

Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley has sent a let­ter to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft request­ing that the Justice Department not seek the death penal­ty for a Dorchester drug deal­er charged with mur­der­ing a rival. Ashcroft has indi­cat­ed that the 25-year-old defen­dant, Brima Wurie, could be a can­di­date for the fed­er­al death penal­ty. Conley believes a fed­er­al death penal­ty case against Wurie would alien­ate com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers whose assis­tance has been a valu­able part of…

The pos­si­ble exon­er­a­tion of a man con­vict­ed of rape in 1987 has led inves­ti­ga­tors of the Houston police depart­ment crime lab­o­ra­to­ry to con­clude that the lab’s reli­a­bil­i­ty cri­sis may be worse than was first antic­i­pat­ed. This rev­e­la­tion could lead to re-test­ing of evi­dence in thou­sands of addi­tion­al cas­es from the past 25 years. Six inde­pen­dent foren­sic sci­en­tists said that a crime lab­o­ra­to­ry offi­cial either lacked the basic knowl­edge of blood typ­ing or know­ing­ly gave false tes­ti­mo­ny leading to…