Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The California Supreme Court is ask­ing the state’s attor­ney gen­er­al’s office to explain why Fred Freeman’s death sen­tence should not be reversed on alle­ga­tions that a now-deceased Superior Court Judge col­lud­ed with pros­e­cu­tors to ensure a cap­i­tal con­vic­tion by elim­i­nat­ing poten­tial Jewish jurors. The Supreme Court issued the show cause order after Freeman’s attor­neys filed a claim stat­ing that Freeman was denied a fair tri­al because Judge Stanley Golde alleged­ly told prosecutors to…

In Texas, Jefferson County District Attorney Tom Maness recent­ly not­ed that the time-con­­sum­ing and cost­ly nature of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment may lead to its demise. ​“I think this is the begin­ning of the end of the death penal­ty,” said Maness after a Criminal District Court Judge rec­om­mend­ed that the Court of Criminal Appeals com­mute the death sen­tence of Walter Bell to life in prison. On three occas­sions, Jefferson County spent count­less hours of work and hun­dreds of thou­sands of dollars to…

A new study con­duct­ed by Professor Richard Berk of the UCLA Department of Statistics has iden­ti­fied sig­nif­i­cant sta­tis­ti­cal prob­lems with the data analy­sis used to sup­port recent stud­ies claim­ing to show that exe­cu­tions deter crime in the United States. In ​“New Claims about Executions and General Deterrence: Deja Vu All Over Again?,” Professor Berk address­es the problem of ​“influ­ence,” which occurs when a very small and atyp­i­cal frac­tion of the avail­able data dom­i­nates the statistical results…

Despite efforts by some state lead­ers to quickly ​“fix” the state’s death penal­ty stat­ue, oppo­si­tion from many leg­is­la­tors halt­ed attempts to pass a bill before the sum­mer recess at the end of July. At a leg­isla­tive con­fer­ence on the issue, Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry noted that ​“a lot of peo­ple who spoke were against it.” These sen­ti­ments prompt­ed Majority Leader Paul Tokasz to announce that legislators were ​“going to take some time with it” before decid­ing how to address con­cerns raised by…

The Death Penalty Information Center hon­ored jour­nal­ists and pro­duc­ers from the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times Magazine, Frontline, Sound Portraits Productions, and inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Alan Berlow dur­ing its 8^th Annual Thurgood Marshall Journalism Awards at the National Press Club on Monday, July 26. The awards hon­or those jour­nal­ists who have made an excep­tion­al con­tri­bu­tion to the under­stand­ing of prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Award-win­n­ing human rights attorney…

A clemen­cy let­ter-writ­ing cam­paign orga­nized by Alabama death row pris­on­ers on behalf of James Barney Hubbard, an ail­ing 74-year-old man who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on August 5^th, was recent­ly halt­ed by Department of Correction author­i­ties at Donaldson Prison. Just two months before Hubbard’s sched­uled exe­cu­tion, Willie Dorrell Minor wrote a clemen­cy peti­tion to Alabama Governor Robert Riley. He planned to have the peti­tion ask­ing Riley to spare Hubbard’s life signed by other individuals…

A new report released by the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury rec­om­mend­ed changes to the state’s cost­ly death penal­ty and called into ques­tion its effec­tive­ness in pre­vent­ing crime. The Office of Research not­ed that it lacked suf­fi­cient data to accu­rate­ly account for the total cost of cap­i­tal tri­als, stating that ​“because cost and time records were not main­tained, the Office of Research was unable to deter­mine the total, com­pre­hen­sive cost of the death penal­ty in Tennessee.” Although…

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, for­mer Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev, med­ical experts, and 48 nations are among those who filed friend-of-the-court briefs on Monday (July 19) urg­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to end the juve­nile death penal­ty. The Court is sched­uled to hear argu­ments this fall in Roper v. Simmons, a case that will deter­mine the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of exe­cut­ing juve­nile offend­ers. The U.S. is one of only a hand­ful of nations around the world that…