Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

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…

Georgia has enact­ed leg­is­la­tion to under­take the defense of indi­gent per­sons charged with cap­i­tal felonies for which the death penal­ty is being sought in any court in the state. The Office of the Multi-County Public Defender will become the Georgia Capital Defender Office in January 2005. The office is now seek­ing to fill key staff positions. ​“See Job Description” (Jan. 15, 2004); see also DPIC’s report ​“With Justice for Few: The Growing Crisis in Death Penalty…

The Chinese gov­ern­ment is plan­ning to imple­ment judi­cial reforms that could sharply reduce its use of the death penal­ty. China will restrict the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment by requir­ing its high­est court, the Supreme People’s Court, to review all death penal­ty cas­es before exe­cu­tions are car­ried out. Currently, the high court reviews only a minor­i­ty of such cas­es, allow­ing the provin­cial courts that hand down death sen­tences to review their own judgments. ​“Criticism of the legal system in…

After spend­ing more than half of his life on Pennsylvania’s death row for a crime he did not com­mit, Nicholas Yarris was released from prison on Friday, January 16. Yarris had been sen­tenced to death row in 1983 for the mur­der of Linda Craig and was cleared of all charges in December 2003 (see DPIC’s press release) after DNA evi­dence exclud­ed him from the crime. He remained jailed for weeks after he was exon­er­at­ed while author­i­ties recal­cu­lat­ed sen­tences he received in Florida for crimes he…

The Pacific island of Samoa has begun for­mal mea­sures to abol­ish the death penal­ty. Samoa has not con­duct­ed an exe­cu­tion in more than 50 years, and death sen­tences that are still deliv­ered by judges are always com­mut­ed to life impris­on­ment. As he intro­duced the statute to abol­ish the death penal­ty, Prime Minister Sailele Malielegaoi told par­lia­ment that the death penal­ty should not be on the law books if it is not going to be car­ried out. (ONE News and AAP, January 16, 2004) See International…