Articles

In an edi­to­r­i­al on April 13, the New York Times described the death penal­ty as​“cru­el, immoral, and inef­fec­tive at reduc­ing crime” and called it​“so rid­dled with error that no civ­i­lized nation should tol­er­ate its use.” The Times described how pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and an​“all-too-com­­mon mind-set to win at all costs” played a sub­stan­tial role in the con­vic­tions of many of the 152 inno­cent men and…

In an unusu­al joint edi­to­r­i­al on March 5, four nation­al Catholic pub­li­ca­tions called for an end to the death penal­ty in the U.S. The edi­tors of America, National Catholic Register, National Catholic Reporter, and Our Sunday Visitor urged​“the read­ers of our diverse pub­li­ca­tions and the whole U.S. Catholic com­mu­ni­ty and all peo­ple of faith to stand with us and say,​‘Capital pun­ish­ment must end.’ ”…

A new report from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) of Alabama has doc­u­ment­ed more lynch­ings in American his­to­ry than pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly of African Americans in the South, and has drawn par­al­lels between this prac­tice and the modern…

In light of the three botched exe­cu­tions that took place in 2014, the Washington Post pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al urg­ing states not to drop​“a veil of secre­cy over exe­cu­tions.” In par­tic­u­lar, the edi­to­r­i­al board oppos­es a pro­posed law in Virginia, which,​“would make prac­ti­cal­ly every­thing about exe­cu­tions in Virginia a state secret — even the build­ing in which they take place. ”​“It’s hard to see the com­pelling need for that…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reit­er­at­ed its oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty, even as Missouri pre­pares to exe­cute the man con­vict­ed of killing a for­mer Post-Dispatch reporter. Marcellus Williams is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on January 28 for the mur­der of Lisha Gayle (pic­tured), who left her job as a jour­nal­ist three years before she was killed. The paper not­ed Gayle’s like­ly oppo­si­tion to the death penalty:…

DPIC’s 2014 Year End Report was fea­tured in numer­ous edi­to­ri­als since its release on December 18,…

Commentary on Scott Panetti​’s sched­uled exe­cu­tion on December 3 in…

In a recent edi­to­r­i­al, the Washington Post urged Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley to com­mute the sen­tences of the four men remain­ing on the state’s death row, say­ing,​“To car­ry out exe­cu­tions post-repeal would be both cru­el, because the leg­is­la­tion under­pin­ning the sen­tence has been scrapped, and unusu­al, because doing so would be his­tor­i­cal­ly unprece­dent­ed.” Maryland is one of three states that have repealed the death penalty…

An arti­cle in the most recent issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review exam­ines the prac­tice of exclud­ing African-Americans from jury ser­vice, par­tic­u­lar­ly in death penal­ty cas­es in North Carolina. In Bias in the Box, Dax-Devlon Ross notes,​“Alongside the right to vote, the right to serve on a jury is an endur­ing pil­lar of our democracy.…Nevertheless, there is per­haps no are­na of pub­lic life where racial bias has been as broadly overlooked…

An arti­cle in the lat­est edi­tion of The Angolite, a mag­a­zine pub­lished by pris­on­ers at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, tells the sto­ries of the ten men who have been exon­er­at­ed from death row in that state. The piece promi­nent­ly fea­tures Glenn Ford, the state’s most recent inmate to be freed. Ford spent 30 years on death row before being released in 2014. Among the oth­er cas­es described is that of…