News & Developments
Crimes Punishable by Death
May 07, 2021
Texas House of Representatives Passes Bill to Limit Death-Penalty Eligibility for Defendants Who Do Not Kill
In an overwhelming bipartisan vote, the Texas House of Representatives has passed a bill that ends death-penalty liability under the state’s controversial “law of partie…
Race
May 06, 2021
South Carolina Legislature Authorizes Use of Electric Chair and Firing Squad as State Reaches 10 Years Without an Execution
One day shy of the tenth anniversary of the state’s last execution, the South Carolina legislature, frustrated by the state’s inability to obtain execution drugs, approved a bill that would authorize putting prisoners to death in …
Public Opinion
May 05, 2021
NEWS BRIEF — Poll Shows Decreasing Support for Death Penalty in Texas
A new poll of registered Texas voters has found that support for the death penalty, while still strong, has fallen significantly over the past decade. A University of Texas/Texas Tribune internet survey of 1,200 registered voters …
Costs
May 05, 2021
Utah Capital Defense Lawyer Who Lost County Contract After Criticizing Underpayment in Death Penalty Cases Gets $250,000 Settlement
A former Utah defense lawyer has received a $250,000 settlement after suing Weber County for allegedly firing him in retaliation for his public criticism of the county’s refusal to properly fund a death-row prison…
Innocence
May 04, 2021
Trial Court Recommends New Trial for Death-Row Prisoner Whose Prosecutor Secretly Also Served as the Court’s Law Clerk
Finding “brazen misconduct” by a prosecutor who withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense and then secretly served as the trial judge’s law clerk in the case, a Midland County, Texas judge has recommended tha…
Juveniles
May 03, 2021
Kentucky Prosecutors Drop Death Penalty in Cases That Raised Constitutionality of Capital Punishment for Offenders Aged 18 – 21
Kentucky prosecutors have dropped capital charges against two defendants who had challenged the constitutionality of the death penalty for crimes committed by offenders younger than 21 years old. On April 21, 2021, prosecutors ann…
Arbitrariness
May 03, 2021
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of April 26, 2021
NEWS (4/29/21) — Oklahoma: The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has vacated the convictions and death sentences of two more death-row prisoners who, the court found, had committed their offenses against Native Americans on tribal lands. …
International
May 01, 2021
NEWS BRIEF — Malawi Supreme Court Declares the Country’s Death-Penalty Law Unconstitutional
The Supreme Court of Appeal in Malawi has declared the country’s death-penalty law unconstitutional, making the southeast African nation the 22nd sub-Saharan country to abolish the death penalty for all offenses. …
Race
Apr 30, 2021
Martin Luther King III: Virginia’s Death Penalty Repeal Shows ‘What is Possible When We Confront This Country’s Racist Past’
The history of racial oppression and lynching in the U.S. South has, civil rights advocate Martin Luther King III writes, “too frequently … gone untold and unaddressed.” But, he says in an April 17, 2021 op-ed in USA Today
Costs
Apr 29, 2021
DPIC’s New Podcast Series, Rethinking Public Safety, Debuts with a Discussion with Former Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro
As a state legislator in 1981, Jim Petro (pictured) supported a bill to reinstate Ohio’s death penalty after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s previous capital punishment statute. Later, as Ohio Attor…
