Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Just hours after a judge ordered that a death sen­tence hand­ed down in fed­er­al court in Massachusetts be car­ried out in New Hampshire, the N.H. House Democratic Leader, Peter Burling, said the state should renew its con­sid­er­a­tion of leg­is­la­tion to repeal the death penalty. ​“I think the issue is so pro­found­ly divi­sive and so com­plete­ly found­ed on peo­ple’s core val­ues that there be some response,” said Burling. ​“I think most of us believed we’d nev­er see an exe­cu­tion in New Hampshire. It’s easy…

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has pro­posed a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to rein­state the death penal­ty after near­ly a cen­tu­ry with­out it. The idea has been met with some firm resis­tance from state law­mak­ers, includ­ing crit­i­cism from Representative Keith Ellison, who noted, ​“The death penal­ty serves no legit­i­mate pur­pose. It’s applied unfair­ly, falling dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly on the poor, peo­ple of col­or and, in too many cas­es, on the inno­cent. It’s also a bud­get buster, sap­ping resources from…

In 2003, California juries sent 16 indi­vid­u­als to death row, the low­est num­ber since 1985 and a dra­mat­ic decline from 1999​’s total of 42 new death sen­tences. Some believe the decline is evi­dence of pros­e­cu­tors being more selec­tive in seek­ing death con­vic­tions, as well as the pub­lic’s skep­ti­cism about the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. Robert Pugsley, a pro­fes­sor at Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles, noted, ​“I think that (inci­dences of wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed death row inmates) has…

The Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty has issued a new report, ​“Questioning a Broken System: Capital Punishment in Illinois in 2003,” an in-depth review of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Illinois fol­low­ing actions by the for­mer gov­er­nor and the leg­is­la­ture to address sys­temic flaws in the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem. The report notes that pros­e­cu­tors con­tin­ue to aggres­sive­ly seek the death penal­ty, but pub­lic skep­ti­cism is grow­ing over the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. For exam­ple, 80%…

Arnold Holloway, a Pennsylvania death row inmate who was con­vict­ed 18 years ago, was grant­ed a new tri­al after a fed­er­al appeals court found that pros­e­cu­tors improp­er­ly exclud­ed blacks from the jury. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said that an assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney in Holloway’s case used 11 of his 12 peremp­to­ry strikes dur­ing jury selec­tion to eliminate blacks. ​“The pat­tern here was cer­tain­ly strong enough to sug­gest an inten­tion of keep­ing blacks off the jury,” said…

Just one day before Georgia was sched­uled to exe­cute Willie James Hall, the state’s parole board com­mut­ed his sen­tence to life in prison with­out parole. During the hear­ing on Hall’s request for clemen­cy, 6 of the jurors from his orig­i­nal tri­al tes­ti­fied that they would have giv­en Hall life with­out parole if that sen­tence had been an option at his tri­al. In addi­tion, the parole board not­ed that Hall had excel­lent behav­ior in prison and no crim­i­nal record before the mur­der. In 2001, a federal…

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to con­sid­er whether the exe­cu­tion of those who were under the age of 18 at the time of their crime vio­lates the Constitution’s ban on ​“cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment.” The Court will like­ly hear argu­ments in the case of Roper v. Simmons , No. 03 – 633, this com­ing fall. The Justices have not vis­it­ed this issue since 1989 and will like­ly decide whether there is now a nation­al con­sen­sus against the prac­tice of exe­cut­ing juve­nile offend­ers. The Justices used a…

On February 5^th, Texas is sched­uled to exe­cute Scott Panetti, a men­­tal­­ly-ill man who defend­ed him­self at his tri­al despite the fact that he suf­fers from schiz­o­phre­nia and bipo­lar dis­or­der. Panetti was con­vict­ed of killing his par­ents-in-law in 1992, sev­er­al years after he was first diag­nosed with schiz­o­phre­nia. He was hos­pi­tal­ized for men­tal ill­ness in numer­ous facil­i­ties before the crime. Evidence sug­gests that Panetti was psy­chot­ic at the time of the shoot­ings, and that he may not have been…

Former Kansas Republican state sen­a­tor Tim Emert recent­ly urged mem­bers of the Kansas Senate Judiciary Committee to enact a mora­to­ri­um on impos­ing the death sen­tence and exe­cut­ing those who have already been sen­tenced to die. Noting that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was his most trou­bling issue when he was a mem­ber of the Kansas leg­is­la­ture, Emert stated, ​“I came to the con­clu­sion the only vote I could live with was a ​‘no’ vote on the death penal­ty in Kansas. I could not, in my mind, be pro-life and…

As it launched a glob­al cam­paign to end the exe­cu­tion of juve­nile offend­ers, Amnesty International released a new report entitled ​“Stop Child Executions! Ending the death penal­ty for child offend­ers.” The report con­demns the exe­cu­tion of those who com­mit crimes before reach­ing the age of 18, a pun­ish­ment the orga­ni­za­tion calls a ​“heinous prac­tice due to a greater aware­ness that chil­dren constitute a ​‘pro­tect­ed’ class.” In the report, Amnesty notes that only eight coun­tries (the United…