Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

More than two decades after Max Soffar was sen­tenced to die for a Houston-area triple mur­der, an appel­late court has ruled that his court-appoint­ed attor­ney inad­e­quate­ly rep­re­sent­ed him dur­ing his 1980 tri­al and that he deserves to be retried with­in 120 days or freed from Texas’s death row. Although no evi­dence link­ing Soffar to the crime was ever found and his accounts of the mur­ders, con­tained in what are believed to be false con­fes­sions, var­ied vast­ly from sev­er­al eye­wit­ness­es, Soffar’s…

“The Problem of False Confessions in a Post-DNA World,” a recent study pub­lished in the North Carolina Law Review, found that juve­nile offend­ers were involved in 33% of the cas­es where the defen­dant con­fessed to a crime that he or she did not com­mit. Ninety-two per­cent of the cas­es involved false con­fes­sions from indi­vid­u­als under the age of 40, and more than half were under the age of 25. According to the study’s authors, law pro­fes­sors Richard Leo of the University…

By a vote of 29 – 19, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights passed a res­o­lu­tion call­ing on all nations to declare a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. The res­o­lu­tion cit­ed con­cerns about the fair­ness and accu­ra­cy of the death penal­ty. In order to address these prob­lems, the res­o­lu­tion calls on nations that no longer use the death penal­ty to remove it from their laws, and for coun­tries that con­tin­ue to car­ry out exe­cu­tions to lim­it the num­ber of crimes that may be pun­ished by death. The…

Researchers at the University of Michigan iden­ti­fied 328 crim­i­nal cas­es, includ­ing 73 death penal­ty cas­es, over the last 15 years in which the defen­dant was ulti­mate­ly exon­er­at­ed. The study sug­gest­ed that many more inno­cent peo­ple are in prison today. Most of the cas­es stud­ied involved mur­der and rape, crimes that are sub­ject­ed to the most intense police inves­ti­ga­tion but that can also pro­vide defen­dants with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to prove their inno­cence based on DNA evi­dence. Of the 328 cases of…

On Monday, April 19, the United States Supreme Court will hear argu­ments in the case of Schriro v. Summerlin that will deter­mine whether a pri­or deci­sion applies only to some death row inmates in the first stage of their appeals or to all inmates in the affect­ed states. In 2002, the Court held in Ring v. Arizona that juries, not judges, must decide who is eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. The new rul­ing could affect over 100 death row inmates in at least 5 states. At the conclusion of…

District Attorney Paul Connick has agreed that Ryan Matthews, a juve­nile offend­er on Louisiana’s death row, deserves a new tri­al. Matthews has main­tained his inno­cence since his arrest. Attorneys for Matthews will use the retri­al as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to present new DNA evi­dence that they believe exon­er­ates their client. Testing of sev­en DNA pro­files gath­ered as part of key evi­dence in the case excludes Matthews as the offend­er, and sev­er­al point to the guilt of anoth­er man, Rondell Love.

San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris has announced that she will seek a life with­out parole con­vic­tion for David Hill, who is accused of mur­der­ing a city police offi­cer. Harris, who ran for office promis­ing not to seek the death penal­ty, said that in cas­es such as this it is ​“nat­ur­al to feel that we should have an eye for an eye” but argued ​“life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole is a severe con­se­quence.” Harris stat­ed that death penal­ty cas­es in California typ­i­cal­ly drag on for…

A bipar­ti­san mea­sure to elim­i­nate the juve­nile death penal­ty in Florida has passed the Senate Criminal Justice Committee and is now on its way to the full Senate for con­sid­er­a­tion. The mea­sure was intro­duced by Republican Senator Victor Crist, a death penal­ty sup­port­er who notes that young peo­ple are dif­fer­ent because they don’t have the same under­stand­ing of con­se­quences as an adult. .The bill also has sup­port from the state’s top law enforce­ment offi­cers, Florida Attorney General…

Unlike offi­cials in some states who dis­missed a recent rul­ing from the International Court of Justice, U.S. President George W. Bush gave cre­dence to the deci­sion by call­ing Mexican President Vincente Fox on Tuesday to dis­cuss the rul­ing and pos­si­ble next steps regard­ing 51 Mexican for­eign nation­als on death row in the U.S. In its rul­ing, the World Court ordered the United States to review the con­vic­tions and sen­tences of 49 Mexican for­eign nation­als to deter­mine the appropriate remedy…

A fed­er­al court has ordered a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing for Robert Marshall after deter­min­ing that his tri­al attor­ney failed to ade­quate­ly rep­re­sent him at his 1986 tri­al. In its rul­ing, the court noted: ​“This is not a case where, after rea­son­able inves­ti­ga­tion, Zeitz (the attor­ney) deter­mined that it was tac­ti­cal­ly a bet­ter choice not to put on a mit­i­gat­ing case. Rather, it is a sit­u­a­tion where Zeitz inad­e­quate­ly pre­pared for the penal­ty phase and put on no mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence because he had…