Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

According to Amnesty International’s lat­est report on exe­cu­tions around the world, China, Iran, the United States, and Vietnam account­ed for 84% of the 1,146 known exe­cu­tions car­ried out in 21 nations in 2003. China car­ried out at least 726 exe­cu­tions, Iran exe­cut­ed 108 peo­ple, the United States car­ried out 65 exe­cu­tions, and Viet Nam report­ed 64 exe­cu­tions last year. Among those exe­cut­ed in 2003 were two juve­nile offend­ers, 1 in China and 1 in the United States. The report noted that…

A bill estab­lish­ing the sen­tenc­ing option of life with­out parole in cap­i­tal cas­es has been sent to Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius for sig­na­ture into law. The state leg­is­la­ture passed the bipar­ti­san mea­sure in an attempt to curb costs asso­ci­at­ed with the death penal­ty. A leg­isla­tive audit released in December 2003 found that the aver­age cost of a death penal­ty case in Kansas is $1.2 mil­lion. An advi­so­ry group of judges and attor­neys who stud­ied the state’s death penal­ty law last year…

Following an International Court of Justice deci­sion that the U.S. vio­lat­ed the rights of 51 Mexican for­eign nation­als on death row and should recon­sid­er their sen­tences and con­vic­tions, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is seek­ing to deter­mine how the Court’s rul­ing will impact the 28 Mexican for­eign nation­als on California’s death row. Of the 28 men await­ing exe­cu­tion, two are exempt from the rul­ing because they had dual cit­i­zen­ship or were advised of their rights under the 1963…

The International Court of Justice ruled in favor of Mexico and found that the United States vio­lat­ed the rights of almost all of the Mexican for­eign nation­als on death row in the U.S. The World Court, which is the high­est legal organ of the United Nations and is based in The Hague, has ordered that the Mexican cas­es be reviewed by U.S. courts. The defen­dants were not informed of their right to talk to con­sular offi­cials after being arrest­ed, as pro­vid­ed by the Vienna Convention on…

A new study con­duct­ed by the Texas Defender Service and Professor John Edens of Sam Houston State University found that state pre­dic­tions of the future dan­ger­ous­ness of cap­i­tal defen­dants were gross­ly inac­cu­rate. The review exam­ined the cas­es of 155 inmates in which pros­e­cu­tion expert wit­ness­es had pre­dict­ed the inmate would be a future dan­ger to soci­ety and in which the state asked for the death penal­ty. However, only 8 (5%) of these inmates lat­er engaged in any seri­ous­ly assaultive behavior…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit has blocked a Texas District Attorney’s final attempt to restore the death sen­tence of Victor Hugo Saldano, who was removed from Texas’s death row in 2000 because of the use of racial­ly charged tes­ti­mo­ny at his tri­al. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that for­mer Texas Attorney General John Cornyn was right to dis­miss Saldano’s death sen­tence because it was based on state tes­ti­mo­ny encour­ag­ing racial bias. During the penal­ty phase of Saldano’s 1996…

Victims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania who may have lost a loved one because of the actions of Charles Cullen, a nurse charged with mul­ti­ple killings, have voiced sup­port for spar­ing Cullen the death penal­ty in exchange for his agree­ing to pro­vide infor­ma­tion on vic­tims. New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey and sev­en pros­e­cu­tors in New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania con­sult­ed with the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies in decid­ing whether to seek the death penalty. ​“It means more for me…

According to a 2003 inter­nal audit of the Texas Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) crime labs, pro­ce­dur­al flaws, secu­ri­ty laps­es and shod­dy doc­u­men­ta­tion prob­lems con­tin­ue to under­mine the qual­i­ty of DNA lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing results through­out the state. These same prob­lems pre­vi­ous­ly shut down crim­i­nal lab­o­ra­to­ries in Houston and McAllen, and the new find­ings could throw thou­sands of crim­i­nal cas­es into doubt. According to pub­lic records obtained by the Houston Chronicle, an audit of labs in…

The Illinois Attorney General’s office will not appeal a fed­er­al judge’s rul­ing find­ing that it was ​“rea­son­ably prob­a­ble” that Gordon Steidl would have been acquit­ted had the jury heard all of the evi­dence in his cap­i­tal mur­der case. The court grant­ed Steidl a new tri­al to prove his long-pro­­claimed inno­cence. Steidl was giv­en the death penal­ty for the 1986 mur­ders of a new­ly­wed cou­ple, but his sen­tence was reduced to life in prison with­out parole in 1999 fol­low­ing an Illinois State…