Articles

As Florida pre­pared to exe­cute Mark Asay (pic­tured) on August 24, the state’s death-penal­ty prac­tices came under fire from human rights groups, crim­i­nal jus­tice reform­ers, and one of the world’s largest phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies. Asay was exe­cut­ed despite the Florida Supreme Court’s recog­ni­tion that his death sen­tence — imposed by a judge after three jurors had vot­ed for life — was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly imposed and that the court mis­tak­en­ly believed both of Asay’s…

In a forth­com­ing arti­cle in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, released online in July, Ben Jones argues that, despite the pop­u­lar con­cep­tion of death-penal­ty abo­li­tion as a polit­i­cal­ly pro­gres­sive cause, its future suc­cess may well depend upon build­ing sup­port among Republicans and polit­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives. In The Republican Party, Conservatives, and the Future of Capital Punishment, Jones — the Assistant Director of Rock Ethics Institute at Pennsylvania…

From 2007 to 2013, Dallas sen­tenced twelve cap­i­tal­ly charged defen­dants to death — more than any oth­er coun­ty in Texas—and Dallas ranks sec­ond nation­al­ly, behind only Harris County (Houston), in the num­ber it has exe­cut­ed since 1972. But the coun­ty has not imposed any new death sen­tences since then, and the recent life sen­tences in the cap­i­tal tri­als of Justin Smith and Erbie Bowser high­light a statewide trend…

“The death penal­ty in Washington is like a zom­bie, not alive or dead, yet con­tin­u­ing to eat its way through pre­cious resources in the crim­i­nal-jus­tice sys­tem,” The Seattle Times edi­to­r­i­al board declared on May 21, urg­ing the state leg­is­la­ture to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Washington cur­rent­ly has a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, imposed by Governor Jay Inslee in 2014, lead­ing the Times to declare the prac­tice ​“effec­tive­ly dead.” But because…

Human Rights Magazine, a quar­ter­ly pub­li­ca­tion by the American Bar Association, focused its first-quar­ter 2017 edi­tion on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, mark­ing the 40^th anniver­sary of Gregg v. Georgia. Articles by nation­al­ly-renowned death penal­ty experts exam­ine geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties in death sen­tences, secre­cy and lethal injec­tion, intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, men­tal ill­ness, and oth­er crit­i­cal ques­tions in the cur­rent dis­course around the death penal­ty. In the intro­duc­tion to the…

As Colorado​’s Senate Judiciary Committee con­sid­ers SB 95—a bill that would replace the death penal­ty with life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole — the edi­to­r­i­al boards of The Denver Post and The Durango Herald have urged the leg­is­la­ture to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state. Colorado’s death penal­ty sys­tem ​“is bro­ken beyond repair and needs to be repealed,” wrote The Denver Post​. Repeal, it said, ​“would save the state…

In a February 6 edi­to­r­i­al, The New York TImes hails the reform efforts of the ​“new gen­er­a­tion” of state and local pros­e­cu­tors who are work­ing to change the United States’ crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, and espe­cial­ly the use of the death penal­ty. The Times high­lights the com­ments of two new­ly elect­ed local pros­e­cu­tors, Beth McCann, the new pros­e­cu­tor in Denver, Colorado, and Kim Ogg, the new dis­trict attor­ney in Harris County, Texas. McCann has…

The edi­to­r­i­al boards of Oklahoma​’s two major news­pa­pers and the lead­er­ship of the Oklahoma Conference of Churches are all urg­ing vot­ers to vote no on State Question 776, which would enshrine the death penal­ty in the Oklahoma con­sti­tu­tion and remove from state courts the pow­er to declare the death penal­ty cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. The Oklahoman called SQ 776 ​“unnece­sary,” say­ing it, ​“should be reject­ed by Oklahoma vot­ers on Nov. 8.” The Tulsa World also…

Newspaper edi­to­r­i­al boards in California are over­whelm­ing­ly sup­port­ing a November bal­lot ini­tia­tive to abol­ish the state’s death penal­ty and replace it with life with­out parole plus resti­tu­tion, and are uni­form­ly reject­ing an oppos­ing ini­tia­tive that pur­ports to speed up the appeals process. At least eight California news­pa­pers have pub­lished edi­to­ri­als sup­port­ing Proposition 62 and oppos­ing Proposition 66, and Ballotpedia reports that it is aware of no edi­to­r­i­al boards that…

Weighing in on California’s com­pet­ing death penal­ty bal­lot ini­tia­tives, the San Jose Mercury News edi­to­r­i­al board urged vot­ers to sup­port repeal of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and reject a pro­pos­al to speed up exe­cu­tions. The edi­to­r­i­al called California’s death penal­ty sys­tem, ​“a fail­ure on every lev­el,” not­ing that the state has spent $4 bil­lion to car­ry out just 13 exe­cu­tions and the $150 mil­lion annu­al sav­ings the inde­pen­dent Legislative Analysts Office says death penalty…