Publications & Testimony

For the third time since 2012, no one in North Carolina was sen­tenced to death in 2017. All four tri­als in 2017 in which pros­e­cu­tors sought a death sen­tence end­ed with a jury either acquit­ting the defen­dant of cap­i­tal mur­der or return­ing a less­er sen­tence. Despite the his­tor­i­cal decline in death sen­tenc­ing in North Carolina, two state leg­isla­tive lead­ers, in a let­ter derid­ed by edi­to­r­i­al boards as polit­i­cal pos­tur­ing, used the recent killing…

The Supreme Court of Kenya has declared the nation’s manda­to­ry death sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. In a December 14, 2017 rul­ing that could affect 7,000 death-row pris­on­ers, the high court over­turned Section 204 of Kenya’s Penal Code, which required that judges impose death sen­tences upon con­vic­tion of mur­der or armed rob­bery. The deci­sion resolves con­flict­ing rul­ings by the coun­try’s low­er courts of appeal, and grants new sentencing…

On December 17, 2007, New Jersey abol­ished the death penal­ty. On the tenth anniver­sary of abo­li­tion, the edi­to­r­i­al board of the New Jersey Law Journal writes,​“On the Death Penalty, New Jersey Got it Right.” The edi­to­r­i­al board wrote,​“Abolition has proven its worth, in that there has been no surge of mur­ders, a sig­nif­i­cant decline of pros­e­cu­tion and appeal expens­es, and the elim­i­na­tion of unre­me­di­a­ble judicial mistakes.

Nearly one-third (31%) of the 39 new death sen­tences imposed in the United States in 2017 came from just three coun­ties, Riverside, California; Clark, Nevada; and Maricopa, Arizona, accord­ing to sta­tis­tics com­piled for DPIC’s annu­al year end report. In a press release accom­pa­ny­ing the annu­al report, DPIC said that the year’s sen­tences reflect​“the increas­ing geo­graph­ic iso­la­tion and arbi­trary nature of the death penalty.”…

Executions and new death sen­tences remained near his­toric lows in 2017, and pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty polled at its low­est lev­el in 45 years, accord­ing to DPIC’s annu­al report,​“The Death Penalty in 2017: Year End Report,” released December 14. Both the 23 exe­cu­tions and the 39 pro­ject­ed new death sen­tences in 2017 were the sec­ond low­est totals in more than a quar­ter-cen­­tu­ry. Four more peo­ple were exon­er­at­ed from death row in 2017, bringing…

As U.S. phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies have strength­ened dis­tri­b­u­tion con­trols on their med­i­cines to pre­vent their use in exe­cu­tions, states have been chang­ing their exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols in search of new or more read­i­ly avail­able drugs. That search has led Nebraska and Nevada to build their exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols around fen­tanyl—the drug known for its role in the cur­rent opi­oid cri­sis in America — and…

The cer­tain­ty of appre­hen­sion, not the sever­i­ty of pun­ish­ment, is more effec­tive as a deter­rent. So argues Daniel S. Nagin (pic­tured), one of the nation’s fore­most schol­ars on deter­rence and crim­i­nal jus­tice pol­i­cy, in his chap­ter on Deterrence in the recent­ly released Academy for Justice four-vol­ume study, Reforming Criminal Justice. Reviewing deter­rence schol­ar­ship since the 1960s and five lead­ing studies from…

There will be no death penal­ty in the first cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion autho­rized under the admin­is­tra­tion of Orange and Osceola County, Florida, State Attorney Aramis Ayala. In a case that rekin­dled the polit­i­cal con­fronta­tion between State Attorney Ayala and Governor Rick Scott over the use of the death penal­ty, Emerita Mapp (pic­tured) plead­ed no con­test on December 8 to one count of mur­der and a sec­ond count of attempt­ed murder in…

The Texas pros­e­cu­tor who sought and obtained the death penal­ty almost 20 years ago against Jeffery Wood (pic­tured), a man who nev­er killed any­one, has now asked that his sen­tence be reduced to life in prison. In a let­ter to the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, sent in August and obtained December 7 by the Texas Tribune, Kerr County District Attorney Lucy Wilke asked the board to rec­om­mend that Governor Greg Abbott grant…

Two of the co-chairs of the bipar­ti­san Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission have praised orga­ni­za­tions in the state for tak­ing​“essen­tial steps” towards imple­ment­ing some of the Commission’s rec­om­men­da­tions to reform Oklahoma’s death-penal­­ty sys­tem. In an arti­cle pub­lished December 7 in the Tulsa World, for­mer Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry (pic­tured, left) and Andy Lester (pic­tured, right),…