Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

A grow­ing num­ber of med­ical and legal experts are warn­ing that the chem­i­cal pan­curo­ni­um bro­mide, a com­mon­ly used lethal injec­tion drug, could leave a wide-awake inmate unable to speak or cry out as he slow­ly suf­fo­cates. Advances in med­i­cine have found that the drug, used by exe­cu­tion­ers to par­a­lyze the skele­tal mus­cles while not affect­ing the body’s brain or nerves, can mask severe suf­fer­ing. While the American Veterinary Medical Association con­demns the use of pan­curo­ni­um bro­mide in the…

When New Jersey enact­ed its death penal­ty law in 1982, it estab­lished a spe­cial unit of lawyers and experts for defen­dants fac­ing cap­i­tal charges. After two decades, the state has 14 indi­vid­u­als on death row. In con­trast, when Pennsylvania enact­ed its death penal­ty law, the state failed to estab­lish a sim­i­lar sys­tem for assis­tance. For Pennsylvania, a state of com­pa­ra­ble pop­u­la­tion to New Jersey, the result of this deci­sion has been a death row pop­u­la­tion of 237 and a capital punishment…

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Pima County, Arizona have been the main juris­dic­tions in their respec­tive states for death sen­tences in the past. Now they are send­ing con­sid­er­ably few­er peo­ple to death row or seek­ing the death penal­ty less. Philadelphia pros­e­cu­tors have sought the death penal­ty 24 times since last September, but jurors from the city have not sent any­one to death row in more than a year. In fact, the city has only secured death sen­tences against 4 peo­ple since 2000. In the…

A stream­ing video on the death penal­ty from the American Constitution Society’s first National Conference August 1 – 3, 2003 in Washington, DC is now avail­able. Participants includ­ed Joseph Curran, Attorney General of Maryland; Angela Davis, American University pro­fes­sor of law; John Gibbons, for­mer Chief Justice of the 3^d Circuit US Court of Appeals; Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama; and Diann Rust-Tierney, Director of the ACLU Capital Punishment…

“Poetic Justice: Reflections on the Big House, the Death House and the American Way of Justice” is Professor Robert Johnson’s first col­lec­tion of poems about prison and cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The col­lec­tion explores the day-to-day life of pris­on­ers and exam­ines the emo­tion­al impact of serv­ing time on death row. Johnson, a pro­fes­sor of jus­tice, law and soci­ety at American University, is an award-win­n­ing author of sev­er­al social sci­ence books on crime and pun­ish­ment and has won the Outstanding…

The Death Penalty Information Center has added a new and ver­sa­tile fea­ture to its exten­sive Web site. Users may now search a fully functional ​“Executions Database” for detailed infor­ma­tion on all exe­cu­tions in the United States in the mod­ern era, 1977 to the present. The data­base enables users to search by year, by state, by race of defen­dant and vic­tim, and by many oth­er cat­e­gories. For exam­ple, you can now find a list of all the exe­cu­tions in Texas involv­ing white defen­dants, or a list of…

A broad bi-par­ti­san coali­tion of House and Senate law­mak­ers has intro­duced leg­is­la­tion to estab­lish a five-year, $1 bil­lion ini­tia­tive to ensure DNA test­ing for death row inmates who claim inno­cence. The ​“Advancing Justice Through DNA Technology Bill,” sup­port­ed by House Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner and Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, includes an Innocence Protection Act (IPA) pro­vi­sion aimed at reduc­ing the risk of wrong­ful con­vic­tions. Under this por­tion of the bill, all…

By a vote of 4 – 3, the Florida Supreme Court has set aside an October 1^st dead­line for inmates to request DNA test­ing of evi­dence that could prove their inno­cence. The jus­tices sus­pend­ed the dead­line while they con­sid­er the inmates’ chal­lenge to the rule’s con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty. Arguments in the case are slat­ed for November 7, 2003. According to the law that estab­lished the dead­line, if inmates con­vict­ed pri­or to 2001 fail to file for test­ing before October 1, 2003, DNA evi­dence in their cases may…

A recent North Carolina pub­lic opin­ion poll con­duct­ed for The News & Observer found that only 49% of vot­ers polled approve of exe­cu­tions for those con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der while 42% favor life in prison with­out parole as the pun­ish­ment. Nine per­cent were unsure. The same poll reg­is­tered 40% of respon­dents in sup­port of a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions and 53% in oppo­si­tion to halt­ing exe­cu­tions for two years while the state stud­ies and fix­es pos­si­ble flaws in its death penalty system.

The Philadelphia law firm of Morgan Lewis recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed the exon­er­a­tion of John Thompson, who spent 18 years on Louisiana’s death row before two of the fir­m’s part­ners helped to win his free­dom. Firm part­ners J. Gordon Cooney Jr. and Michael L. Banks pro­vid­ed Thompson with pro bono ser­vices that cost the firm $1.7 mil­lion in legal work and expens­es over a 15-year peri­od and involved 90 lawyers and sup­port staff. According to the city’s bar asso­ci­a­tion, there is a mas­sive need for…