Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

On March 31, 2004, the International Court of Justice will issue a rul­ing in a case brought by Mexico against the United States involv­ing 52 Mexicans on death row in var­i­ous U.S. states. The Court is the high­est legal organ of the United Nations and is based in The Hague. Mexico has argued that the defen­dants are enti­tled to retri­als because they were not informed of their right to talk to con­sular offi­cials after being arrest­ed, as pro­vid­ed by the Vienna Convention on Consular…

Following two hours of tes­ti­mo­ny includ­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of crime vic­tims and death row exonerees, the Minnesota Senate Crime Prevention and Public Safety Committee vot­ed 8 – 2 against rein­stat­ing the death penal­ty, con­tin­u­ing near­ly a cen­tu­ry with­out the sen­tence on the state’s books. The Committee’s vote like­ly blocks pas­sage of the death penal­ty bill this year. Don Streufert, whose daugh­ter was raped and mur­dered in 1991, was among those who tes­ti­fied against the bill. He noted, ​“No…

On May 18^th, Texas plans to exe­cute Kelsey Patterson, a men­tal­ly ill man who was first diag­nosed with para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia more than a decade before he mur­dered two women in 1992. After the mur­der, Patterson wan­dered around dressed only in his socks. Although a jury found Patterson com­pe­tent to stand tri­al, he repeat­ed­ly inter­rupt­ed the pro­ceed­ings to offer a ram­bling nar­ra­tive about implant­ed devices and oth­er aspects of a con­spir­a­cy against him. According to a new report from Amnesty…

In the lat­est edi­tion of the jour­nal Deviant Behavior, soci­ol­o­gist Robert Young of the University of Texas has report­ed that death penal­ty sup­port­ers, such as those who are qual­i­fied to sit on juries in cap­i­tal cas­es, were about a third more like­ly to have prej­u­diced views of blacks. Young’s eval­u­a­tion of polling data also revealed that death penal­ty sup­port­ers are more like­ly to con­vict the defen­dant. When polled, they were near­ly twice as like­ly to say it was worse to let the guilty go free…

In a vote uphold­ing the state’s long­stand­ing abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, Michigan law­mak­ers refused to sup­port a mea­sure that would have put cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment before state vot­ers in a ref­er­en­dum. The vote fell 18 short of the 2/​3 required for pas­sage. During a lengthy House debate regard­ing the bill, Representative Jack Minor (D‑Flint) told his col­leagues that stud­ies show crime rates are low­er in states with­out the death penal­ty. He noted, ​“The death penalty’s not a deter­rent. In fact,…

According to recent Gallup polls, 64% of Americans favor the death penal­ty, while 48% of Canadian and 55% of British cit­i­zens favor the pun­ish­ment. Great Britain and Canada have abol­ished the death penal­ty. The polling research also exam­ined whether cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has a deter­rent effect on crime. Polling has revealed that most Americans do not believe the death penal­ty acts as a deter­rent to com­mit­ting mur­der. Gallup’s report com­pared homi­cide sta­tis­tics in the United States, Britain, and…

The March 2004 edi­tion of The Spangenberg Report includes valu­able infor­ma­tion on crim­i­nal jus­tice reforms from around the coun­try, includ­ing death penal­ty devel­op­ments. An exam­i­na­tion of Georgia’s new Public Defender Standards Council and its efforts to over­haul indi­gent defense ser­vices in the state, results from a Spangenberg Group study of indi­gent defense in Virginia, the find­ings of a death penal­ty cost review in Kansas, and addi­tion­al state updates from Illinois, Texas,…

Two Congressmen have intro­duced a non-bind­ing res­o­lu­tion, backed by the threat of impeach­ment, that would express the sense of Congress that U.S. judges should not con­sid­er for­eign laws or court deci­sions in their rul­ings. The mea­sure, authored by Republican Representatives Tom Feeney of Florida and Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, was trig­gered by recent court deci­sions, includ­ing death penal­ty cas­es, in which jus­tices made ref­er­ence to laws or opin­ions in oth­er coun­tries. Feeney raised the…

An Army Court of Criminal Appeals has vacat­ed the death sen­tence of William Kreutzer, a Fort Bragg sol­dier who was sent to the military’s death row for killing a fel­low sol­dier and wound­ing oth­ers in 1995. The Court cit­ed a num­ber of grounds for the rul­ing that opens the door for rehear­ings on some charges and the sen­tence. For exam­ple, Kreutzer’s attor­neys failed to ade­quate­ly explain the sig­nif­i­cance of their client’s men­tal health prob­lems for the pan­el that deter­mined his guilt and…

According to District Attorney Tom Keith, death sen­tences in North Carolina have dra­mat­i­cal­ly declined because jurors are increas­ing­ly skep­ti­cal of the jus­tice sys­tem. Last year, 6 peo­ple were sent to North Carolina’s death row, far less than the 26 who were giv­en death sen­tences in 1999. Keith, who is mov­ing resources away from death penal­ty cas­es and to aggres­sive­ly tar­get­ing gun crim­i­nals before they kill, believes that a num­ber of high-pro­­file wrong­ful con­vic­tions and DNA exonerations…