In-Depth Reports

Racial minorities are being prosecuted under federal death penalty law far beyond their proportion in the general population or the population of criminal offenders. Analysis of prosecutions under the federal death penalty provisions of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 [2] reveals that 89% of the defendants selected for capital prosecution have been either African-American or Mexican-American. Moreover, the number of prosecutions under this Act has been increasing over the past two years with no…

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 innocent persons have been or will be…

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that Americans wholeheartedly support the death penalty, the latest national opinion poll released in conjunction with this report shows that more people in this country would prefer alternative sentences that guarantee both protection and punishment over the death penalty. Death penalty support becomes a minority opinion when the public is presented with a variety of alternative sentences. Most Americans, however, are unaware that the length of imprisonment…

“Them without the capital get the punishment” is a well-worn phrase among those who have studied the unequal application of the death penalty in America. Poor people facing society’s ultimate penalty must rely on public funds to ensure they are competently represented, as the Constitution guarantees. Yet, in more and more jurisdictions, public services of all kinds are being slashed for lack of adequate funding. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is one such jurisdiction — a dramatic and graphic example…

Twelve years ago, when Jimmy Carter was in the White House, Gary Nelson was convicted and sentenced to die for the 1978 rape and murder of a 6‑year-old child in Chatham County, Georgia, the kind of high-visibility crime that exerts great pressure on police and prosecutors to solve quickly. On November 6, 1991, after more than eleven years protesting his innocence — watching time forever slip away behind him while it moved him closer and closer to the electric chair — Nelson was released. A free…