Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

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 innocence on victims’ family members, and…

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 to determine why innocent individuals…

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 sentences for aggravated murder…

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 contents has just begun…

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 watching news accounts. The…

Death sentences have declined across the country. The following four cases are recent illustrations of this trend: In Cook County, Illinois, a judge sentenced Ronald Hinton to life without parole, citing abuse in the defendant’s background and his remorse for the crimes. Hinton admitted to three murders. (Chicago Tribune, August 25, 2004). In Butler County, Ohio, a three-judge panel sentenced Tom West to life without parole for a shooting spree at a trucking company in which two people were…

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 taxpayers more than half…

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, domestic…

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 arrived on…

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 capital…