Publications & Testimony

15.1% of cap­i­tal defen­dants sen­tenced to death in Pennsylvania since 1980 were rep­re­sent­ed at tri­al by a lawyer who has been dis­ci­plined for pro­fes­sion­al mis­con­duct, and that has risen to 18.2% in the past decade, accord­ing to an inves­tiga­tive report by The Reading Eagle. These rates of dis­ci­pline were between 5 and 6 times high­er than the 3% dis­ci­pli­nary rate for Pennsylvania lawyers as a whole over the past 30 years. The dis­ci­pli­nary issues have disproportionately…

UPDATE: On May 23, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court over­turned Timothy Foster’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence because Georgia pros­e­cu­tors improp­er­ly exer­cised their dis­cre­tionary jury strikes on the basis of race to exclude African American jurors. The vote was 7 – 1, with Justice Thomas the lone dis­senter. For more on the deci­sion, read DPIC’s summary…

Derrick Jamison was exon­er­at­ed from death row in Ohio on October 25, 2005, 20 years to the day after he was sen­tenced to death in Hamilton County (Cincinnati). On the 30^th anniver­sary of his sen­tenc­ing and the 10^th anniver­sary of his release, a Salon pro­file describes the work Jamison now does to edu­cate peo­ple about the risks of wrongful…

In an inter­view with Bill Keller of The Marshall Project, President Obama said the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty is ​“deeply trou­bling,” and ques­tioned the man­ner in which cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is applied in the United States. While the President said that he is not opposed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ​“in the­o­ry,” he expressed con­cern about issues includ­ing racial bias, wrong­ful con­vic­tions, and botched exe­cu­tions. ​“We know, sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, that there’s a racial bias that…

Arizona and Texas attempt­ed to import lethal injec­tion drugs in vio­la­tion of fed­er­al law, but the ship­ments were halt­ed by U.S. Food and Drug Administration offi­cials in late July, accord­ing to reports by The Arizona Republic and Buzzfeed. The Republic reports that the Arizona Department of Corrections paid $27,000 for sodi­um thiopen­tal for use in exe­cu­tions, but the ship­ment was halt­ed at the Phoenix air­port by U.S. Food and Drug…

Recognizing that ​“a grow­ing num­ber of evan­gel­i­cals now call” for a shift away from the death penal­ty, the National Association of Evangelicals — an umbrel­la group for con­gre­ga­tions rep­re­sent­ing mil­lions of evan­gel­i­cal Christians in the United States — has backed away from its pri­or strong sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. A new­ly adopt­ed NAE res­o­lu­tion states, ​“Evangelical Christians dif­fer in their beliefs about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, often cit­ing strong bib­li­cal and the­o­log­i­cal rea­sons either…

A new study by University of Virginia law pro­fes­sor Brandon Garrett (pic­tured) shows a dra­mat­ic decline in the death penal­ty in Virginia over the last decade. Virginia has car­ried out the third high­est num­ber of exe­cu­tions since the 1970s and his­tor­i­cal­ly has exe­cut­ed a high­er per­cent­age of its death-row pris­on­ers than any oth­er state. However, Garrett said there are now few­er than two cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing tri­als per year and Virginia juries have not imposed any new death…

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction announced on October 19 that the state was post­pon­ing all exe­cu­tions until at least 2017 because it has been unable to obtain the lethal injec­tion drugs nec­es­sary to car­ry them out. Governor John Kasich issued war­rants of reprieve resched­ul­ing the exe­cu­tions of 11 death-row pris­on­ers with exe­cu­tion dates in 2016 and a 12^th with a January 2017 exe­cu­tion date. Ohio resched­uled the exe­cu­tions for dates in 2017 through 2019.

Former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton (pic­tured) tes­ti­fied in state leg­isla­tive hear­ings on October 14 that Ohio should ban use of the death penal­ty against defen­dants who suf­fer from seri­ous men­tal ill­ness when they com­mit a cap­i­tal crime. Stratton, a Republican who was appoint­ed to the court in 1996 and served, fol­low­ing reelec­tion, until 2012, called the death penal­ty ​“inef­fi­cient, inef­fec­tive and a great bur­den on our soci­ety.” Stratton said that the…

Support for the death penal­ty in the United States dropped by two per­cent­age points over the last year and oppo­si­tion rose to its high­est lev­els since before the Supreme Court declared exist­ing death penal­ty statutes uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in 1972, accord­ing to the 2015 annu­al Gallup Poll on the death penal­ty. Gallup reports that 61% of Americans say they favor the death penal­ty, down from 63% last year and near the 40-year low of 60% sup­port record­ed in 2013. Support was 19 points below the 80%…