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DPIC FACT CHECK:  Does the death penalty make police safer? Our review of 29 years of FBI murder data says "no."

Officers are murdered at a 27% higher rate in states that have long had the death penalty than in states that have long abolished it. Eight of the 9 safest states for police officers do not have the death penalty, while 18 of the 20 states with the highest rates of officer victimization are death-penalty states. 9 of the 10 states with the smallest percentage of homicides involving police victims are states that do not have the death penalty.

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NEW DISCUSSIONS WITH DPIC PODCAST — Culture of Conviction: A Discussion with Attorney Brian Stolarz on How Houston Prosecutors Sent His Innocent Client, Alfred Dewayne Brown, to Death Row and How Hidden Evidence Set Brown Free 

Alfred Dewayne Brown (pictured left) was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in 2005 in Harris County, Texas, for the murder of a police officer. Brian Stolarz (pictured right), attorney and author of the recent novel Grace and Justice on Death Row, represented Brown in his post-conviction appeals and, in 2015, won his freedom. In this podcast, Mr. Stolarz speaks with DPIC’s Robin Konrad about the legal issues in Brown’s case, discussing the culture of conviction and the prosecutorial misconduct that led to Brown’s wrongful conviction. Stolarz offers suggestions that he believes can help protect the innocent from wrongful convictions and death sentences.

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NEWS (5/14): An Idaho state trial court ordered the Idaho Board and Department of Correction to disclose lethal-injection drug records (including where it obtained its execution drugs and communications with other drug-suppliers) under the state public-records law.

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NEWS (5/11): A Connecticut trial court has resentenced Todd Rizzo to life without possibility of release, bringing to seven the number of former death-row prisoners to be formally resentenced following the Connecticut Supreme Court's 2016 ruling declaring the state's death penalty unconstitutional. Four former death-row prisoners remain to be resentenced.

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NEWS (5/10): Without addressing the merits of the underlying challenge to Nevada's lethal-injection protocol, the Nevada Supreme Court vacated the lower court's decision that blocked the state from using a paralytic in combination with fentanyl in Scott Dozier's execution after the lower court found the paralytic could produce air hunger and mask signs of consciousness. Lawyer's acting on behalf of Dozier had filed the lawsuit as a state post-conviction proceeding, but the Nevada Supreme Court found that was the improper vehicle to raise such a challenge.

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NEWS (5/7): The Georgia Supreme Court held that in Putnal v. State that a capital defendant has a due process right to confidential pretrial evaluations by defense mental health experts. The court ruled that a Polk County trial court had violated that right when it disclosed to the prosecution the names and specialties of defense experts to whom it had granted access to evaluate Dustin Putnal before the defense had decided whether to present the experts as witnesses and was required to disclose their identities. 

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NEWS (5/7): The California Supreme Court has upheld the conviction and death sentence imposed on Ennis Reed. Justice Goodwin Liu, joined by Justice Leondra Kruger, issued a notable dissent proposing new standards for addressing problematic eyewitness identifications and arguing that Reed had shown that prosecutors discriminatorily exercised their discretionary strikes to exclude African Americans from serving on the jury.  

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NEWS (5/4): Georgia executed Robert Earl Butts, Jr. on May 4, one day after the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles lifted the stay of execution it granted on May 2. It was the 10th execution of 2018 and the second in Georgia.

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NEWS (5/4): Darren Vann pleaded guilty to seven murders and was sentenced to seven concurrent sentences of life without parole in Indiana. In exchange, Lake Superior County prosecutors dropped the death penalty against him.

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NEWS (5/2 and 5/3): The Florida Supreme Court has denied relief in three more cases in which defendants were unconstitutionally sentenced to death after non-unanimous jury sentencing recommendations.

On May 3, the court denied relief to Perry Taylor, who was unconstitutionally sentenced to death following a non-unanimous 8-4 jury recommendation for death. The court did not enforce its prohibition on death sentences following non-unanimous jury sentencing votes because Taylor's direct appeal became final in 1994, before the court's June 2002 retroactivity cutoff.

On May 2, it denied relief to William Reeves and Victor Jones. Reeves was unconstitutionally sentenced to death following a non-unanimous 10-2 jury recommendation for death, but his direct appeal became final in 1994. Jones was unconstitutionally sentenced to death on two counts of murder, but his direct appeal became final in 1995. The jury recommended death 10-2 on the first count and unanimously on the second. Because of the date his appeal became final, the court did not review whether the unconstitutional sentencing practices contributed to the jury's unanimous recommendation on the second count.

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NEWS (5/1): South Florida federal prosecutors have reached a plea agreement with Esteban Santiago, the 28-year-old mentally ill veteran who opened fire at the Ft. Lauderdale airport in 2017, killing five people. In exchange for prosecutors withdrawing their notice of intent to seek the death penalty, Esteban agreed to plead guilty and to be sentenced to life in prison without parole. 

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NEWS (4/27): The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed an Alabama federal district court decision dismissing Jeffery Lee's challenge to the state's lethal-injection process and has ordered the district court to conduct an evidentiary hearing on Lee's claim. See Lethal Injection.

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NEWS (4/26): The New Hamphire state legislature has voted to end the death penalty in that state. The House of Representatives voted 223-116 to repeal the state's capital punishment statute, joining the state senate, which had previously voted 14-10 in favor of repeal. However, Governor Chris Sununu has said he will veto the bill. Repeal proponents need 16 votes in the senate to override any veto. The House has sufficient votes to override. See Recent Legislative Activity.

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NEWS (4/26): The California Supreme Court has upheld the death sentences imposed upon James Daveggo and Michelle Lyn Machaud.

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NEWS (4/25): Texas executed Erick Davila. It was the 9th execution in the U.S. in 2018 and the 5th in Texas. See Executions in 2018.

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NEWS (4/25): The Ohio Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence imposed on Willie Wilks, Jr.

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NEWS (4/19): Alabama executed Walter Moody, who at age 83 was the oldest person executed in the modern era. It was the 8th execution in the U.S. in 2018 and the second in Alabama.

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NEWS (4/19): A Florida jury has voted unanimously to sentence Haitian national Sanel Saint-Simon to life without possibility of parole in the murder and suspected sexual assault of his long-time girlfriend's sixteen-year-old daughter. The case is notable because it was one of 29 cases Governor Rick Scott had removed from State Attorney Aramis Ayala and transferred to a special prosecutor after Ayala had announced that that her office would not pursue the death penalty in any case.

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NEWS (4/18): In Ohio v. Mason, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that its capital sentencing statute does not violate a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury and the U.S. Supreme Court's 2016 decision Hurst v. Florida, which reiterated that a defendant is entitled to a jury finding of all facts necessary to impose a death sentence; "[a] jury's mere recommendation is not enough." Despite recognizing that some other courts have reached a different conclusion, the Ohio Supreme Court held that jury's weighing of aggravating circumstances against mitigating factors is not a fact-finding process, so it is not governed by Hurst, but even if it were, there was no violation because Ohio law requires the jury to unanimously agree that aggravating circumstances outweigh mitigating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt before the trial judge can consider imposing a death sentence.

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NEWS (4/18): A Connecticut trial court has resentenced former death-row prisoner Jessie Campbell III to life in prison without the possibility of release. Campbell is the sixth death-row prisoner to be resentenced following the Connecticut Supreme Court's 2016 ruling declaring the state's death penalty unconstitutional. Five other prisoners who were on death row at the time of that decision have yet to be formally resentenced.

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NEWS (4/17): The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Georgia death-row prisoner Marion Wilson, rebuffing state prosecutors' efforts to further limit federal court authority to enforce the constitution in habeas corpus cases. In a 6-3 vote with Justice Breyer writing for the majority, the Court reversed a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that had denied Wilson relief on his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. The Court said that the appeals court had improperly speculated as to possible reasons a state court could have denied Wilson's claim instead of reviewing the actual reasons the state post-conviction court had offered for its decision. The Court returned the case to the Eleventh Circuit for further review of Wilson's ineffectiveness claim under the appropriate standard.

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NEWS (4/17): The New Hamphire legislature's House Criminal Justice Committee voted 12-6 to recommend that the full House repeal the state's death penalty. Previously, the state senate voted 14-10 to approve SB 593, which would replace the state's death penalty with a sentence of life without parole. Governor Chris Sununu has said he will veto the bill.

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NEWS (4/13): An Oklahoma County trial court has ruled that Gov. Mary Fallin and the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety violated the state’s open records law by delaying more than 17 months before releasing records related to the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in 2014. The court ruled that the state's recent production of documents concerning the execution constituted an adequate substantive response to those records requests. 

Death Sentences, Executions Second Lowest in a Quarter Century

Resources

• Full text of the report.
• DPIC's Press Release.
• INFOGRAPHIC: "The Death Penalty in the U.S.".
• AUDIO: Clips.
• GRAPHICS: Individual Downloads as PNG or SVG files.
• 2017 Death Sentences by Name, Race, and County

Featured Links

"Battle Scars: Military Veterans and the Death Penalty"

Innocence
Public Opinion

 

DPIC Podcast Series: We have begun a new set of podcasts on the death penalty in each state, each with interesting historical facts. The following are now available: Michigan, Wisconsin, Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Vermont, Massachusetts, District of Columbia, Rhode Island, and New Jersey. Check out our podcasts now! Also listen to DPIC's podcasts on death penalty issues.