Policy Issues
Victims’ Families
Murder victims’ families hold a variety of views on the death penalty. Studies suggest the death penalty does not bring closure and interferes with their healing process.
Policy Issues
Murder victims’ families hold a variety of views on the death penalty. Studies suggest the death penalty does not bring closure and interferes with their healing process.
Tragically, every capital murder case involves at least one deceased victim. Vindication for victims and closure for victims’ families are often held out as primary reasons for supporting the death penalty. However, many people in this circumstance believe that another killing would not bring closure and that the death penalty is a disservice to victims.
The families and associates of the victims (sometimes called “covictims”) can play a key role in how a case proceeds in the courts. The prosecution may consult with the families on whether to seek the death penalty or to accept a plea to a lesser sentence. If death is pursued, family members may be asked to testify at the sentencing phase to describe the impact the murder has had on their own lives. Victims’ families often speak at legislative hearings on the death penalty, both in favor of and in opposition to a death penalty statute.
Statistically, the race of the victim can be relevant to the issues of arbitrary application and racial discrimination in the death penalty. Studies have shown that death cases disproportionately involve white victims in the underlying murder.
Victims’ family members who oppose the death penalty are sometimes ignored if the prosecution is intent on seeking the most extreme punishment. In addition, victim impact statements at sentencing proceedings can be so dramatic and powerful as to overwhelm any mitigating factors presented about the defendant’s life history.
DPIC keeps track of the race and gender of all victims in cases where there has been an execution. The voices of victims’ families are highlighted as offering an important and unique perspective on the death penalty.
Jul 27, 2020
When Attorney General William Barr announced in July 2019 that the federal government planned to resume fede…
Read MoreJan 07, 2021
Calling the death penalty “ineffective, racially based, hypocritical and inhumane,” St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell (pictured) has renewed his pledge to never authorize a capital prosecution. In a December 23, 20…
Oct 21, 2020
A Wyoming woman whose mother and husband were murdered in separate incidents is calling on the state to repeal its death penalty for the benefit of victims’ family members. In an October 17 op-ed in the Casper Star Tri…
Aug 03, 2020
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has overturned the death sentence imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (pictured) for his role in the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured more …
Jul 30, 2020
The U.S. government has set an August 26, 2020 execution date for the sole Native American on federal death row, against the wishes of his tribe, the victims’ family, and the local U.S. Attorney’s office that prosecuted the case.On July 29,…
Jul 13, 2020
As the U.S. Department of Justice seeks to resume federal executions after a 17-year hiatus, the government’s rushed timeframe, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and unresolved issues involving the lethal-injection protocol, and the victims’ family’s…
Jul 07, 2020
Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. (pictured), the “Golden State Killer,” whom prosecutors had one year earlier held out as a “poster child for the death penalty,” has pleaded guilty to 13 counts each of murder and rape in exchange for mul…
Jun 16, 2020
With a petition for review pending before the U.S. Supreme Court on the legality and constitutionality of the federal execution protocol, U.S. Attorney General William Barr on June 15, 2020 set execution dates for four federal dea…
Apr 09, 2020
Saying she wanted justice for her murdered four-year-old daughter, not “a closed case with an innocent person in jail,” Sharon Fahy has joined with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and defense lawyers in the fight to im…
Jan 29, 2020
Georgia executed Donnie Lance on January 29, 2020 after his requests for DNA testing and a plea for clemency supported by the children he and murder victim Joy Lance shared were denied. Lance was convicted …
Jan 22, 2020
Saying that Nicholas Sutton “has gone from a life-taker to a life-saver,” lawyers for the Tennessee death-row prisoner filed an application for cle…