Following the botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma in April, President Obama ordered the Justice Department to review death penal­ty pro­ce­dures in the states. Though a time­line for the study has not been released, the depart­ment has already reached out to at least one orga­ni­za­tion, the Constitution Project, which pro­posed sev­er­al reforms in its recent report on the death penal­ty, includ­ing the estab­lish­ing of an office at the Justice Department to review inno­cence claims from death row pris­on­ers. The group alos asked for more infor­ma­tion about fed­er­al death penal­ty cas­es, giv­en evi­dence of racial dis­par­i­ty, and the devel­op­ment of ​“fed­er­al stan­dards and pro­ce­dures” for accred­it­ing forensic laboratories. 

In call­ing for a review, Obama cit­ed numer­ous prob­lems with the death penal­ty, includ­ing, ​“racial bias, uneven appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty …[and] indi­vid­u­als on death row who lat­er on were dis­cov­ered to have been inno­cent.…”

(B. Goad, ​“Obama’s death penal­ty review risks back­lash from the states,” The Hill, June 9, 2014). See Federal Death Penalty and Studies.

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