Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

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 steadily dropping since 1998, are…

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 determination in the face of the…

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 expressed concern about the recent…

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 click here. To obtain the entire volume…

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 prevent innocent…

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 further found a “dereliction of duty” by…

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 Justice is best known for launching…

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 executions are scheduled at this…

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 edition of the Sourcebook shows that by 2001…

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 murder of police…