Articles

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Houston Chronicle high­lights the case of Texas death-row inmate Milton Mathis, whose IQ of 62 places him well below the thresh­old for intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty (for­mer­ly called ​“men­tal retar­da­tion”). Mr. Mathis faces exe­cu­tion on June 21, despite the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing in Atkins v. Virginia, which banned the exe­cu­tion of inmates with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties. The Chronicle not­ed, ​“If put to death, Milton Mathis would have one of the low­est — if not the low­est — undis­put­ed IQ scores of any Texas inmate sen­tenced to…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Philadelphia Inquirer con­cludes the pub­lic is ready to scrap the death penal­ty in Pennsylvania, even if the leg­is­la­ture is not. According to the edi­to­r­i­al, juries opt­ed for the death penal­ty in just 3% of first-degree mur­der cas­es over the past four years: ​“Pennsylvania juries clear­ly are more com­fort­able with the alter­na­tive sen­tence of life with­out parole, which assures that first-degree mur­der con­victs will waste away behind bars.” The Inquirer cites sev­er­al dif­fer­ent rea­sons for what they called a ​“sea change” in atti­tudes toward cap­i­tal punishment:…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Birmingham News called on Alabama law­mak­ers to pass leg­is­la­tion that would require a three-year mora­to­ri­um on impos­ing death sen­tences and car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions, giv­ing the state time to address flaws in the death penal­ty sys­tem. The edi­to­r­i­al out­lined five rea­sons why leg­is­la­tors with var­i­ous posi­tions should be unit­ed in such an effort. The paper stated:

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 Legislature should take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to final­ly get rid of the death penal­ty.” Nebraska was the only state to retain the elec­tric chair as its sole means of exe­cu­tion. The paper not­ed that it was the right time to take a broad­er look at the death penal­ty. ​“With the advent of more…

An edi­to­r­i­al in the Chicago Sun-Times applaud­ed Illinois Governor Pat Quinn for sign­ing the bill abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty. The edi­tors wrote, ​“We’ve learned that the sys­tem makes too many mis­takes to entrust it with the ulti­mate pow­er of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. We’ve learned that legal safe­guards can be pushed aside when emo­tions are high after a heinous crime. We’ve learned that polit­i­cal ambi­tion some­times blinds those in pow­er to the weak­ness­es of a case. We’ve learned that evi­dence can dis­ap­pear or be mis­rep­re­sent­ed, that wit­ness­es seek­ing spe­cial deals may lie,…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Baltimore Sun urged Gov. Martin O’Malley to work toward repeal­ing the death penal­ty in Maryland. The paper sug­gest­ed that changes in the com­po­si­tion of the state Senate might make the General Assembly more recep­tive to end­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. There have also been con­cerns raised about lethal injec­tions on the the state and nation­al lev­el. But it was the fun­da­men­tal unfair­ness and high costs of the death penal­ty that under­scored the paper’s posi­tion: ​“Countless stud­ies have shown that the death penal­ty is no more effec­tive in…

Recent edi­to­ri­als in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times called into ques­tion the cur­rent use of lethal injec­tion in exe­cu­tions, in light of the deci­sion by the sole U.S. man­u­fac­tur­er of a key drug used by almost all states to stop its pro­duc­tion. Hospira Inc. was the only U.S. pro­duc­er of sodi­um thiopen­tal, the main anes­thet­ic used in lethal injec­tions, but the com­pa­ny said inter­na­tion­al con­cerns about the death penal­ty prompt­ed its halt. The short­age of the drug caused some states to seek it over­seas. The New York…

The infor­ma­tion and analy­sis in DPIC’s recent 2010 Year-End Report were report­ed in hun­dreds of media out­lets around the coun­try. Among the papers writ­ing edi­to­ri­als on the trends cit­ed in the report were the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Colorado’s Aurora Sentinel. The Times’ edi­to­r­i­al, ​“Still Cruel, Less Usual,” not­ed, ​“A report released this month by the Death Penalty Information Center count­ed 46 exe­cu­tions in 2010. That is near­ly 12 per­cent few­er than a year ago, and down sharply from the 85 exe­cu­tions of 2000.……

Following the release of the report from the New Hampshire Commission to Study the Death Penalty, New Hampshire​’s Concord Monitor called for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state. The Commission con­clud­ed a year of pub­lic hear­ings and care­ful study and chose by a 12 – 10 vote to rec­om­mend nei­ther expand­ing nor abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty. However, the Monitor point­ed out that the evi­dence pre­sent­ed to the com­mis­sion was pri­mar­i­ly in favor of repeal­ing the death penal­ty. One of the many argu­ments against the death penal­ty con­sid­ered by the Commission…