Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

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…

The New York League of Women Voters has urged state law­mak­ers not to attempt a ​“quick fix” solu­tion to the state’s flawed death penalty law. ​“We now have a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-exam­­ine the use of the death penal­ty in New York,” said Marcia Merrins, pres­i­dent of the League of Women Voters. In June 2004, the New York Court of Appeals declared the state’s death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The League of Women’s Voter’s, which plans to host a series of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment forums throughout…

The award-win­n­ing documentary ​“Deadline,” which takes view­ers direct­ly into the emo­tion­al and legal storm sur­round­ing for­mer Illinois Governor George Ryan’s extra­or­di­nary deci­sion to com­mute the death sen­tences of all those on death row, will air on NBC dur­ing a spe­cial 2‑hour ​“Dateline” pro­gram at 8 p.m. on July 30^th. The Big Mouth Productions doc­u­men­tary has gained wide­spread crit­i­cal acclaim and it was fea­tured at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. During film­ing, the program’s…

A study con­duct­ed by the U.S. Navy and Yale University found that eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny is often large­ly inac­cu­rate, even when vic­tims get a long look at vio­lent crim­i­nals, and police and juries may be giv­ing this evi­dence too much cred­i­bil­i­ty. After a unique study of 509 Navy and Marine offi­cers under­go­ing high-lev­­el and low-lev­­el stress dur­ing elite hostage sur­vival train­ing at Fort Bragg, N.C., researchers dis­cov­ered that few of the par­tic­i­pat­ing top offi­cers could accurately…