Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

According to the lat­est Gallup Poll in October 2003, sup­port for the death penal­ty has dropped to 64%, its low­est lev­el since 1978. The 32% of Americans opposed to the death penal­ty rep­re­sent­ed the most oppo­si­tion since 1972. (2003 poll: CNN​.com, November 25, 2003; Fox News, November 26, 2003) This find­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy giv­en the exten­sive media cov­er­age lead­ing to the tri­als of John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo in Virginia. Two oth­er polls this year also record­ed a drop in death…

The Supreme Court agreed to clar­i­fy the impact of its 2002 Ring v. Arizona rul­ing that held that jurors, rather than a judge, must be allowed to deter­mine whether a defen­dant is eli­gi­ble for a death sen­tence. The Justices will decide whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit was cor­rect when it over­turned Warren Summerlin’s death sen­tence, hold­ing that Ring should apply retroac­tive­ly to inmates who had exhaust­ed their direct appeal. While the Supreme Court’s Ring ruling…

New York’s high­est court has over­turned the death sen­tence of James F. Cahill, one of six men remain­ing on the state’s death row. The Court found that the tri­al judge made errors in screen­ing the jurors who con­vict­ed Cahill and sen­tenced him to death. In its 4 – 2 rul­ing, the Court also not­ed that pros­e­cu­tors had not proven the ​“aggra­vat­ing fac­tors” required by New York’s death penal­ty law. Cahill will now serve a sen­tence of life in prison. (New York Times, November 26, 2003) Despite the fact…

In an edi­to­r­i­al pub­lished after a Virginia jury rec­om­mend­ed a death sen­tence for John Muhammad, USA Today not­ed that the case of Muhammad and his juvenile co-defendant ​“under­mines pub­lic con­fi­dence that the law is applied objec­tive­ly.” The edi­to­r­i­al crit­i­cized the manip­u­la­tive place­ment of the case into Virginia courts and the stretch­ing of Virginia’s law to achieve the death penal­ty. Usually, Virginia has required that the defen­dant be the actu­al shoot­er to be eli­gi­ble for a death sentence.

In an inter­view in the Science sec­tion of the New York Times, Dr. Laurence Steinberg, a psy­chol­o­gist at Temple University and the direc­tor of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice, states that juve­nile offend­ers should be viewed under the law as less cul­pa­ble than adults because their brains are still devel­op­ing. In a forth­com­ing paper, Steinberg argues for a legal approach ​“under which most youths are dealt with in a sep­a­rate justice system…

Two years after Mexican for­eign nation­al Gerardo Valdez came with­in days of his sched­uled exe­cu­tion in Oklahoma, a jury has resen­tenced him to life with­out parole. In 2001, after review­ing evi­dence that Valdez was denied his right to seek assis­tance from the Mexican con­sulate as required by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board vot­ed to rec­om­mend Valdez’s clemen­cy request, and Mexican President Vicente Fox made a per­son­al plea to Governor Frank…

An Elon University Institute for Politics and Public Affairs poll of North Carolinians found that 41% sup­port a pro­posed 2‑year mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions to allow time to exam­ine prob­lems that could result in the exe­cu­tion of an inno­cent per­son. Although 62% of those sur­veyed said they sup­port the death penal­ty, only 38% opposed a mora­to­ri­um and the remain­ing 21% of respon­dents were unde­cid­ed. The North Carolina Senate passed a mora­to­ri­um mea­sure in 2003, and the House is expect­ed to take up…

According to a report by the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform, an F.B.I. pol­i­cy to pro­tect Boston infor­mants who were known mur­der­ers result­ed in the Bureau allow­ing at least two inno­cent men to be sent to death row. Investigators not­ed that the policy ​“must be con­sid­ered one of the great­est fail­ures in the his­to­ry of fed­er­al law enforce­ment” and had ​“dis­as­trous con­se­quences.” According to the report, the F.B.I. was so intent on pro­tect­ing guilty infor­mants that it passed up…

By a vote of 115 – 0, mem­bers of the Illinois House approved a series of reforms to the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem. The leg­isla­tive pack­age gives the Illinois Supreme Court greater pow­er to throw out unjust ver­dicts, gives defen­dants more access to evi­dence, and bars the death penal­ty in cas­es based on a sin­gle wit­ness. The reforms are among the 80 rec­om­men­da­tions made by the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment, formed in 2000 by for­mer Governor George Ryan to address wrongful…

The United Kingdom’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s Human Rights Annual Report 2003 includes a review of Britain’s offi­cial actions to address con­cerns about the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in the United States. In addi­tion to an out­line of the U.K.‘s reac­tion to sig­nif­i­cant death penal­ty devel­op­ments in the U.S., the report high­lights the sharp dif­fer­ence between British and U.S. cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment poli­cies. It…