Articles

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 kind of bla­tant censorship,…

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: ​“It would be sur­pris­ing, in…

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 Maryland is one of three states that have repealed the death penal­ty prospec­tive­ly but still have inmates on…

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 or casually…

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 John…

According to a recent op-ed about China in the New York Times, the world leader in exe­cu­tions is hav­ing sec­ond thoughts about the death penal­ty. Liu Renwen, a legal schol­ar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the annu­al num­ber of exe­cu­tions in China dropped by half from 2007 to 2011, as more offend­ers were giv­en ​“sus­pend­ed death sen­tences,” which are gen­er­al­ly reduced to life sen­tences. According to a 2008 poll in three provinces, pub­lic sup­port for the…

A recent op-ed by Jordan Steiker, endowed pro­fes­sor of law and Director of the Capital Punishment Center at the University of Texas, high­light­ed the declin­ing use of the death penal­ty in that state. AlthoughTexas leads the nation in exe­cu­tions, death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions per year have dropped sharply since the 1990s. Prof. Steiker wrote, ​“In 1999, Texas juries returned an astound­ing 48 death sen­tences. Since 2008, how­ev­er, Texas has…

When Connecticut abol­ished the death penal­ty in 2012, it did so prospec­tive­ly, leav­ing its death row pop­u­la­tion in place. Now, Connecticut new­pa­per The Day is call­ing on the state to ​“have the courage and con­sis­ten­cy to out­law gov­ern­ment sanc­tioned killing in all instances.” The edi­to­r­i­al first high­lights the paper’s long­stand­ing oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, say­ing ​“It remains our posi­tion that a state-spon­sored exe­cu­tion disproportionately…