Articles

In an edi­to­r­i­al high­light­ing pub­lic sup­port for the sen­tenc­ing option of life with­out parole in death penal­ty cas­es and the need to take steps to pro­tect against exe­cut­ing inno­cent peo­ple, USA Today recent­ly stat­ed that life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole is a​“fit­ting replace­ment” for the death penal­ty. The edi­to­r­i­al praised the his­toric enact­ment of a life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole statute in Texas and oth­er recent activ­i­ties around the…

Newspaper edi­to­ri­als from papers in Texas and oth­er areas of the coun­try praised the Supreme Court’s rul­ing in the case of Thomas Miller-El and crit­i­cized the way in which the death penal­ty has been imple­ment­ed in Texas. Miller-El was grant­ed a new tri­al in light of strong evi­dence of racial bias dur­ing jury selec­tion at his orig­i­nal tri­al. Editorial excerpts fol­low:New York Times[Miller-El] is an impor­tant rul­ing that reit­er­ates to all courts the importance of…

The May/​June issue of Foreign Policy mag­a­zine includes an arti­cle on the death penal­ty in Japan by Charles Lane, Supreme Court reporter for The Washington Post. Lane notes that Japan’s death penal­ty is shroud­ed in secre­cy and cul­mi­nates in exe­cu­tions out­side of all pub­lic view. He pro­vides read­ers with a rare look inside this sys­tem and com­pares that coun­try’s poli­cies with U.S. prac­tices and inter­na­tion­al trends. The arti­cle,​“A View to a Kill,” notes that although…

In the course of its research, 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…

A recent Los Angeles Times edi­to­r­i­al called on California law­mak­ers to impose a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions until a state com­mis­sion charged with exam­in­ing the fair­ness and accu­ra­cy of California’s death penal­ty laws can fin­ish its work. The paper not­ed that a sim­i­lar review led by New York state law­mak­ers result­ed in find­ings that effec­tive­ly end­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in that state for this year. The edi­to­r­i­al stat­ed:Many Californians, law­mak­ers as well…

Just days before the sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Donald Beardslee in California, the Los Angeles Times has called for his clemen­cy while ques­tion­ing the even-hand­ed­­ness of the whole sys­tem. The edi­to­r­i­al con­cludes that the death penal­ty is a​“lie” to the peo­ple of California: Donald Beardslee was 38 years old in 1981 when he shot one woman and stran­gled and slashed anoth­er in San Mateo County, retal­i­a­tion for a soured drug deal. He is now 61. So many years have passed since…

Chicago…

Daily Targum…

Sedalia…

Minnesota…