Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

A fed­er­al judge in Memphis has blocked the exe­cu­tion of Philip Workman (pic­tured), a Tennessee man who has been on death row for more than 20 years despite evi­dence that he did not shoot the vic­tim who was killed. Workman’s exe­cu­tion, sched­uled for September 22, was delayed pend­ing the results of a fed­er­al review of anoth­er Tennessee case that could affect Workman’s lat­est appeals. (New Channel 5 News in Tennessee, September 2, 2004). Workman was con­vict­ed in 1981 of the…

The Summer 2004 Drake Law Review includes arti­cles based on a recent Symposium on Wrongful Convictions fea­tur­ing some of the nation’s lead­ing experts on inno­cence and the death penal­ty. The arti­cles pro­vide a detailed overview of the issue of inno­cence and exam­ine wrong­ful con­vic­tions from a num­ber of per­sec­tives, includ­ing the role of crim­i­nal case review in cor­rect­ing mis­car­riages of jus­tice, the need to record police inter­ro­ga­tions, the impact of…

By a vote of 23 – 12, the California Senate passed a res­o­lu­tion estab­lish­ing the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, a pan­el of experts who will inves­ti­gate the state’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and present a series of rec­om­men­da­tions to the leg­is­la­ture and gov­er­nor based on their find­ings. Members of the pan­el will be appoint­ed by the Senate Committee on Rules and will be charged with hold­ing a series of meet­ings and public hearings…

An op-ed in Oregon’s Albany Democrat Herald called on the state to re-think its reliance on the death penal­ty: 20 years after vot­ers in Oregon rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty, it is time to take a dis­pas­sion­ate look and con­clude that it has­n’t done much good. In the gen­er­al elec­tion of 1984, Oregon vot­ers over­whelm­ing­ly called for the death penal­ty to be resumed. 2 ini­tia­tives were on the bal­lot that year. One, call­ing for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment or mandatory life…

The dis­cov­ery of 280 unopened and mis­la­beled box­es of evi­dence found in the Houston Crime Lab’s prop­er­ty room could impact as many as 8,000 cas­es, includ­ing many cas­es where defen­dants have sought evi­dence to prove their inno­cence. Investigators began sort­ing through the box­es this month, find­ing an array of evi­dence that ranged from a fetus and human body parts to clothes and a bag of Cheetos. Although the box­es were locat­ed near­ly a year ago, the cat­a­loging of their…

In the two weeks since India’s first hang­ing in 13 years, two chil­dren have died and a third young boy was near­ly killed as a result of imi­tat­ing the high­ly pub­li­cized exe­cu­tion. A 14-year-old boy died after he tied one end of a rope around his neck and swung the oth­er end on a ceil­ing fan in his home to re-enact the exe­cu­tion. The boy’s father said that his son was very curi­ous about the nation’s first exe­cu­tion and had close­ly fol­lowed the days lead­ing up to it by…

Death sen­tences have declined across the coun­try. The fol­low­ing four cas­es are recent illustrations…

The San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office reflect­ed on a num­ber of fac­tors in decid­ing to forego seek­ing a death sen­tence for Seti Christopher Scanlan, whose first tri­al end­ed in a mis­tri­al after he took the stand and begged jurors to sen­tence him to death. Prosecutors are now seek­ing a sen­tence of life in prison for Scanlan after con­clud­ing that​“it was not rea­son­ably like­ly that we would get a jury that would deliv­er the death penal­ty.” The case has already cost…

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…

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…