In-Depth Reports

–Janet Reno, Former Attorney General of the United States…

Across the coun­try, police are being laid off, pris­on­ers are being released ear­ly, the courts are clogged, and crime con­tin­ues to rise. The eco­nom­ic reces­sion has caused cut­backs in the back­bone of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. In Florida, the bud­get cri­sis result­ed in the ear­ly release of 3,000 pris­on­ers. In Texas, pris­on­ers are serv­ing only 20% of their time and rear­rests are com­mon. Georgia is lay­ing off 900 cor­rec­tion­al per­son­nel and New Jersey has had to…

Texas is the nation’s fore­most exe­cu­tion­er. It has been respon­si­ble for a third of the exe­cu­tions in the coun­try and has car­ried out two and a half times as many death sen­tences as the next lead­ing state. Death war­rants are being signed at an unman­age­able pace, yet the Texas death row is bulging with unprece­dent­ed num­bers of inmates. But this accel­er­at­ed form of jus­tice comes at a price. The rest of the coun­try should heed the warn­ing of the Texas experience before…

– Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Feb. 22, 1994…

In 1972, when the Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that the death penal­ty as then applied was arbi­trary and capri­cious and there­fore uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, a major­i­ty of the Justices expect­ed that the adop­tion of nar­row­ly craft­ed sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures would pro­tect against inno­cent per­sons being sen­tenced to death. Yet the promise of Furman has not been ful­filled: inno­cent per­sons are still being sen­tenced to death, and the chances are high that…