Articles

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

In a thor­ough and pen­e­trat­ing arti­cle pub­lished in The New Yorker on August 31, David Grann offers fur­ther evi­dence that Texas prob­a­bly exe­cut­ed an inno­cent man in 2004. Grann care­ful­ly exam­ines all the evi­dence that was used in the two-day tri­al in 1992 to con­vict Cameron Todd Willingham of mur­der by arson of his three young chil­dren. It is now well estab­lished through a series of inves­ti­ga­tions by other…

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…

The lat­est edi­tion of Lapham’s Quarterly fea­tures essays from a wide vari­ety of authors reflect­ing on crime and pun­ish­ment. At least one of the arti­cles, by Christopher Hitchens, focus­es on the death penal­ty. In​“Staking a Life,” Hitchens draws on his back­ground in reli­gion, moral­i­ty, and gov­ern­ment to explore why the United States con­tin­ues to uti­lize cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment while many of our allies have aban­doned it.​“I have heard a number of…

A judge in Texas has rec­om­mend­ed that the claim of an unfair tri­al brought by death row inmate Charles Hood should go for­ward because the tri­al judge and pros­e­cu­tor had a secret roman­tic rela­tion­ship that they hid from the defen­dant before, dur­ing, and after his tri­al. CBS News Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen report­ed on the sto­ry, writ­ing,​“Hood’s judge and pros­e­cu­tor lied, over and over again, to hide their affair. Any blame for the delay…