Articles

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Virginian-Pilot called for elim­i­nat­ing the death penal­ty as a good way to address the $3.5 bil­lion gap in the state’s bud­get. ​“Doing away with the option of a death sen­tence makes sense on sev­er­al lev­els,” the edi­tors wrote. ​“It would save the state from hav­ing to pay fees asso­ci­at­ed with lengthy tri­als and years of appeals. It would end the agony of repeat­ed court hear­ings for the fam­i­lies of vic­tims. It would elim­i­nate the four per­pet­u­al­ly under­staffed cap­i­tal defend­er’s offices, whose attor­neys han­dle appeals automatically…

Linda Greenhouse, for­mer Supreme Court writer for the New York Times, recent­ly wrote about the rever­sal of a death sen­tence by the U. S. Supreme Court. The Court over­turned George Porter Jr.​‘s death sen­tence because of the inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion he received and the pow­er­ful mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence in Mr. Porter’s life that his attor­ney failed to inves­ti­gate and present to the jury con­sid­er­ing his clien­t’s life. The Court’s opin­ion not­ed, ​“Our nation has a long tra­di­tion of accord­ing lenien­cy to vet­er­ans in recog­ni­tion of their ser­vice, espe­cial­ly for those who fought…

A recent opin­ion piece by the Editorial Director of the Clarion-Ledger in Mississippi points to the high costs of the death penal­ty as a way in which arbi­trari­ness enters into the appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: ​“When is a crime a crime deserv­ing of death?,” David Hampton asks. ​“When the coun­ty can afford it, of course.” The paper sup­ports the death penal­ty but the Editorial Director offered the exam­ple of Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith, who said his coun­ty can­not afford to pros­e­cute death penal­ty cas­es. The author noted,…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in America Magazine enti­tled The Price of Death reviewed the grow­ing prob­lems with the death penal­ty and stat­ed, ​“It is time for the nation to con­clude once and for all that in our civ­i­lized soci­ety there is no place for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” The nation­al Catholic week­ly cit­ed the recent­ly botched exe­cu­tion in Ohio, racial dis­par­i­ties, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent as rea­sons why pub­lic sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has declined. The edi­to­r­i­al also point­ed to the high costs of the death penal­ty as a reason…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al from the Aurora Sentinel in Colorado com­ment­ed on the botched exe­cu­tion of Romell Broom. The paper enti­tled its posi­tion as ​“Time for America to move past cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” In addi­tion to cit­ing the prob­lems with lethal injec­tion, the paper not­ed the risk of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent and the U.S.‘s increas­ing iso­la­tion on the death penal­ty in the world. The edi­to­r­i­al con­tin­ut­ed, ​“Even for those who believe that such heinous crim­i­nals deserve to die, our soci­ety becomes dan­ger­ous­ly base if we pro­mote these kinds of deaths.“ Read the…

In an edi­to­r­i­al on September 28 in the New York Times, the paper called the death penal­ty ​“an eco­nom­ic drain on gov­ern­ments with already bad­ly deplet­ed bud­gets.” Citing fig­ures from the Death Penalty Information Center, the Times not­ed that ​“States waste mil­lions of dol­lars on win­ning death penal­ty ver­dicts, which require an expen­sive sec­ond tri­al, new wit­ness­es and long jury selec­tions. Death rows require extra secu­ri­ty and main­te­nance costs.” The edi­tors remarked that some states have begun recon­sid­er­ing whether the death penal­ty is worth its exor­bi­tant costs, espe­cial­ly since the…

Recent sci­en­tif­ic reports indi­cat­ing that Texas like­ly exe­cut­ed an inno­cent man have spurred wide cov­er­age and com­men­tary. Cameron Todd Willingham was exe­cut­ed in 2004 for the arson mur­der of his three chil­dren. Fire experts now say the blaze was like­ly an acci­dent. Excerpts from coverage:

Each year, DPIC col­lects rel­e­vant death penal­ty arti­cles that have appeared in print and on media Web sites. Our col­lec­tion cer­tain­ly does not con­tain all such arti­cles, nor do we claim that it rep­re­sents the ​“best” arti­cles. It is only a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of the exten­sive cov­er­age giv­en to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in print in a par­tic­u­lar year. For those inter­est­ed in exam­in­ing this cov­er­age, we have pre­pared an index of the arti­cles from 2008 in Excel for­mat. Note that we are not post­ing the actu­al text of the arti­cles. The…