Arbitrariness
,Jun 07, 2021
The California Supreme Court heard oral argument on June 2, 2021 in a capital case whose outcome could affect the fate of hundreds of prisoners on the state’s death row. Supported by friend-of-the-court briefs by California Govern…
Arbitrariness
,New Voices
,Mar 26, 2007
After decades of maintaining a position that the government should have the legal right to impose capital punishment, the Chicago Tribune is now calling for abolition of the death penalty. Noting concerns about innocence, the arbi…
Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 13, 2021
Major U.S. editorial writers have criticized the Biden administration’s June 30, 2021 announcement o…
Mental Illness
,Recent Legislative Activity
,Apr 10, 2023
An editorial in the Dallas Morning News urges the Texas legislature to pass a bill to ban the death penalty for people with severe mental illness, stating, it “seems like an obvious decision in a decent society.” House Bill 727, sponsored…
Innocence
,New Voices
,Oct 16, 2008
The Tennessean called for a more just legal system as a state legislative study committee on the death penalty continues to meet. The committee began its work this year after a series of embarrassing mistakes in applying …
Innocence
,New Voices
,Apr 16, 2007
Noting that they “cannot reconcile the fact that [the death penalty] is both imperfect and irreversible,” the Dallas Morning News has called on Texas to abandon capital punishment. The paper, which has long suppor…
New Voices
,Dec 30, 2008
The Dallas Morning News renewed its call for a moratorium on executions in Texas because of the numerous errors in the state’s death penalty system. The paper highlighted the cases of Michael Blair and
Arbitrariness
,Innocence
,New Voices
,Nov 27, 2019
In a departure from its prior editorial stand, the Orlando Sentinel published an editorial on November 22, 2019 calling for Florida to abolish the death penalty. Describing the state’s capital-punishment system as a “hopeless quagmire of …
Costs
,Recent Legislative Activity
,New Voices
,Mar 08, 2016
The Lexington Herald-Leader, Kentucky’s second-largest newspaper, announced it was ending its long-held support for the death penalty, and now believes the state legislature should abolish capital punishment. Describing its previous posit…
New Voices
,Jan 22, 2008
The Richmond Times-Dispatch, a key paper in the Virginia state capital, has long supported the death penalty. But their recent editorial takes the position that capital punishment “achieves no legitimate goals that cannot be achieved by a lif…
New Voices
,Feb 07, 2017
In a February 6 editorial, The New York TImes hails the reform efforts of the “new generation” of state and local prosecutors who are working to change the United States’ criminal justice system, and especially the use of the death penalt…
Recent Legislative Activity
,New Voices
,Apr 28, 2008
The governor of Missouri, Matt Blunt, has proposed that his state expand the death penalty to include cases of sexual assault against children where the victim is not killed. However, according to an editorial in the Springfield N…
New Voices
,Feb 06, 2008
In a recent editorial, the Concord Monitor advocated against expanding New Hampshire’s death penalty law to include multiple-murder offenses, as some lawmakers have proposed. Instead, they say, “the death penalty should be elimina…
Arbitrariness
,Executions Overview
,Nov 02, 2020
In a continuing diminution of procedural safeguards in capital cases, the Florida Supreme Court has ended its long-standing practice of independently reviewing death penalty cases on appeal to ensure that they are not disproportionate to sentences…
Arbitrariness
,Intellectual Disability
,United States Supreme Court
,May 27, 2020
For the third time in 2020, the Florida Supreme Court has reduced the constitutional protections afforded to death-row prisoners. In a May 21 decision in Phillips v. State, the court overturned its own case precedent and …
Arbitrariness
,Race
,New Voices
,Oct 24, 2018
Following the Washington Supreme Court’s October 11, 2018 decision declaring the state’s death penalty unconstitutional, news outlets have questioned what comes next. Op-ed writ…
Arbitrariness
,Costs
,Innocence
,Apr 07, 2021
In a wide-ranging six-part editorial series analyzing systemic flaws in the administration of the death penalty, the editorial board of the South Florida Sun Sentinel has called for the abolition of capital punishment. “[I]t is past time …
Recent Legislative Activity
,Feb 12, 2020
As state legislatures in Ohio and Washington contemplate the future of their death-penalty statutes, major newspapers in each of the states are advocating legislative repeal. On February 6, 2020, following …
Recent Legislative Activity
,Sentencing Data
,New Voices
,Executions Overview
,Jan 27, 2016
A decline in executions is likely in Missouri after two years of unusually high numbers. In 2014, Missouri tied with Texas for the most executions in the U.S., and it was second to Texas in 2015. However, changing attitudes about …
New Voices
,Executions Overview
,Feb 11, 2008
Days after the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the electric chair was unconstitutional, a Lincoln Journal Star editorial urged the state to reconsider the death penalty: “Instead of rushing to pass a new means of capital punishment, the Legislat…
Apr 22, 2011
Days after the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the electric chair was unconstitutional, a Lincoln Journal Star editorial urged the state to reconsider the death penalty: “Instead of rushing to pass a new means of capital punishment, the Legislat…
Innocence
,New Voices
,Jan 23, 2006
Philip Yam is the News Editor of Scientific American Magazine. He recently posted an item on the magazine’s Web site about the death penalty. Some excerpts from the posting, entitled “Science versus the Death Penalty,” are below: …
Dec 21, 2004
While applauding a life-sentence plea bargain arranged by Palm Beach County’s State Attorney in an especially heinous murder, the Palm Beach Post said the state had “forfeit[ed] the moral standing to execute anyone else.” …
Innocence
,New Voices
,Jul 10, 2006
Anna Quindlen, writing in the June 26, 2006 issue of Newsweek, reflected on the underlying questions surrounding the death penalty: Hardly any other civilized place does this anymore. In the past three decades, the number of natio…
Jun 26, 2003
A recent editorial in The Beacon Journal notes that Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer, who played a leading role in writing Ohio’s death penalty statute 22 years ago when he was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is now calling for pas…
Arbitrariness
,New Voices
,Jun 01, 2006
Reversing its long-standing support for capital punishment, the Spokane Spokesman-Review recently published an editorial calling for an end to capital punishment in the United States. The paper noted that the decision to change its stance on the d…
Dec 27, 2004
A&E television host and well-known investigative journalist Bill Kurtis chronicles his journey from death penalty supporter to capital punishment opponent in his newly released book, The Death Penalty on Trial: Crisis in American Justice.
Innocence
,New Voices
,Jan 15, 2007
In a recent Dallas Morning News editorial, the paper noted the incongruity between the state apologizing to a prison inmate who was freed following DNA testing, and its aggressive pursuit of irrevocable executions. The paper state…
Innocence
,New Voices
,Jul 05, 2006
In a recent op-ed, Jack Fuller, former editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, called for an end to capital punishment. Citing a series of mistakes by eyewitnesses, police and forensic experts, he stated that the criminal justice system is to…
Oct 12, 2004
Following a call from the Houston Police Chief and from state legislators to halt executions in cases from Harris County, four of the state’s largest newspapers published editorials in support of a moratorium on executions. The Houston police crim…
Costs
,Sentencing Alternatives
,New Voices
,May 19, 2006
An editorial in the Asbury Park Press, a newspaper that formerly supported capital punishment, called on New Jersey policymakers to abandon the state’s costly death penalty and replace it with the “sure and swift” sentence of life without parole. …
Arbitrariness
,New Voices
,Dec 12, 2006
The Albany Democrat-Herald in Oregon recently editorialized that the “death penalty isn’t working,” and concluded “that the death penalty here is a pointless law. If we’re not going to apply this law, then getting…
New Voices
,Jan 19, 2006
The San Antonio Express-News, which supports the death penalty, recently called for a halt to executions in Texas because of concerns about the ongoing problems at the Houston Crime Lab. The Express-News stated:This month, New Jersey lawma…
Aug 30, 2004
An op-ed in Oregon’s Albany Democrat Herald called on the state to re-think its reliance on the death penalty: 20 years after voters in Oregon reinstated the death penalty, it is time to take a dispassionate look and conclude that it hasn’…
Aug 09, 2004
A recent San Jose Mercury News editorial recommended including the death penalty in the California Performance Review prepared for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to reduce public spending. The paper stated that the abandonment of capital punishmen…
Costs
,New Voices
,Aug 03, 2017
In a forthcoming article in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, released online in July, Ben Jones argues that, despite the popular conception of death-penalty abolition as a politically progressive cause, its future succ…
Mental Illness
,Recent Legislative Activity
,New Voices
,Jan 05, 2018
Saying that the death penalty should “be reserved for the ‘worst of the worst in our society,’” retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General John Castellaw (pictured) has urged the Tennessee state legislature to adopt …
New Voices
,May 17, 2006
A recent editorial in Nature, the international weekly journal of science, called on scientists and doctors to refuse to participate in executions: “Don’t advise, don’t prescribe, don’t inject. Let the dea…
Innocence
,Clemency
,New Voices
,Apr 14, 2017
Amid mounting concerns that Virginia may execute an innocent man on April 25, a diverse group of religious, political, and business leaders are calling on Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe to grant clemency to
Innocence
,Clemency
,Recent Legislative Activity
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 07, 2022
As 2021 came to a close, editorial writers in four death penalty states called for legislative and executive action to end capital punishment or further limit its use. Editorial boards for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
