Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Mirroring a nation­wide decline in both exe­cu­tions and death row pop­u­la­tion, Maryland’s death row has fall­en by 50% in recent years and the state has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 1998. An in-depth review of Maryland’s death row by The Washington Post found that the state’s death row has dropped from a pop­u­la­tion of 18 to 9, large­ly due to rever­sals in cas­es and the impact of court rul­ings else­where. Victims’ fam­i­lies, emo­tion­al­ly frayed by the years of…

The New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that pros­e­cu­tors who plan to seek the death penal­ty must sub­mit that request to a grand jury for approval. Prior to the 4 – 2 rul­ing by the Court, pros­e­cu­tors could decide to seek the death penal­ty as late as the mid­dle of the tri­al. The Court’s deci­sion was made in the case of Scott Fortin, and will prob­a­bly affect oth­er cas­es cur­rent­ly being pros­e­cut­ed. The remain­ing 13 inmates on death row may not be affect­ed unless the…

Three stays of exe­cu­tion were issued on February 4^th in cas­es in Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania. The United States Supreme Court briefly stayed an exe­cu­tion in Florida to exam­ine the appeal from Johnny Robinson. However, the Court vot­ed 5 – 4 to allow the exe­cu­tion to take place. In Pennsylvania, the March 11 exe­cu­tion of Kenneth Miller was stayed by a Philadelphia court. In Texas, a 60-day stay was grant­ed to Scott Panetti who was to be exe­cut­ed February 5. Panetti,…

In his book​“Still Surviving,” Nanon Williams (pic­tured right), who was 17 at the time of the crime that placed him on death row, pro­vides a first hand account of liv­ing under a sen­tence of death in Texas. The book details Williams’s jour­ney from teenage boy to adult­hood while liv­ing in the shad­ow of the nation’s busiest exe­cu­tion cham­ber. His text intro­duces read­ers to the expe­ri­ences of soli­tary con­fine­ment and hav­ing friends exe­cut­ed, as well as to maintaining…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…