Articles

Judicature Journal Examines Impact of Death Penalty on…

Victims of vio­lence and ter­ror are not nec­es­sar­i­ly well served by a sys­tem that promis­es​“clo­sure” in the form of the death penal­ty, accord­ing to a recent Washington Post col­umn by Dahlia Lithwick. Among oth­er cas­es, the author ques­tions the assump­tions in the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s case against Zacarias Moussaoui as it relates to the needs of the fam­i­ly mem­bers from the September 11^th attack: The death penal­ty tri­al of Zacarias Moussaoui has been tout­ed by the…

After mem­bers of the Wisconsin Senate passed a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for a ref­er­en­dum on rein­stat­ing the death penalt, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel edi­to­r­i­al crit­i­cized the vote and urged mem­bers of the state Assembly to reject the pro­pos­al. ThoughWisconsin has not had the death penal­ty since 1853, the state leg­is­la­ture has con­sid­ered a rein­state­ment mea­sure dur­ing each of the past 20 years. The Sentinel voiced con­cerns about inno­cence, race, deter­rence, and…

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 2005 in PDF…

An edi­to­r­i­al in the Austin-American Statesman praised the rec­om­men­da­tions of the gov­er­nor’s advi­so­ry coun­cil on crim­i­nal jus­tice, espe­cial­ly in regard to changes need­ed in the death penal­ty sys­tem. Excerpts from the…

The most recent edi­tion of the Amicus Journal, a London pub­li­ca­tion that pro­vides a forum for dia­logue on issues con­cern­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment around the world, con­tains arti­cles address­ing U.S. death penal­ty con­cerns. Among the top­ics cov­ered are clemen­cy, men­tal retar­da­tion, con­di­tions on death row, inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel, and lethal injec­tion. The mag­a­zine fea­tures pieces by a num­ber of U.S. death penal­ty experts, includ­ing an essay on…

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 law­mak­ers vot­ed to halt exe­cu­tions while a task force reviews the fair­ness and costs of impos­ing the death penal­ty.Texas should con­sid­er doing the same but for slight­ly dif­fer­ent rea­sons.The dis­turb­ing facts com­ing out of an…

The Washington Post edi­to­ri­al­ized about the death penal­ty in 2005, com­ment­ing on many of the points made in DPIC’s Year End Report:[T]he over­all ten­den­cy is unmis­tak­able: At least for now, with crime and mur­der rates low and the threat of wrong­ful con­vic­tions on peo­ple’s minds, the death penal­ty does not have the same attraction that…

As evi­dence sur­faces that Texas may have killed an inno­cent man when it exe­cut­ed Ruben Cantu in 1993, recent edi­to­ri­als by the Austin American-Statesman and the Dallas Morning News have crit­i­cized Texas’ death penal­ty and called on the state to take a clos­er look at its​“flawed” cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. The Austin American-Stateman wrote: We all should remem­ber (Ruben) Cantu’s case and the lessons it offers as the coun­try car­ries out its 1000^th exe­cu­tion since 1976…

According to the North Carolina News & Record, death sen­tences in the state have sig­nif­i­cant­ly declined since the 2001 enact­ment of leg­is­la­tion that allows defen­dants to plead guilty to first-degree mur­der and receive a sen­tence of life with­out parole rather than go to tri­al and risk the death penal­ty. Juries are also return­ing few­er death sen­tences. The paper argues that the emer­gence of the life-with­­out-parole alter­na­tive should result in…