Publications & Testimony

On January 17, 2006, California exe­cut­ed Clarence Ray Allen, who was 76 years old, legal­ly blind, dia­bet­ic, and used a wheel­chair. He was the last per­son the state has exe­cut­ed. A decade lat­er, California’s death row pop­u­la­tion has increased by 100 to 746, mak­ing it the largest in the nation. The state has exe­cut­ed 13 pris­on­ers in 40 years at an esti­mat­ed cost of $4 bil­lion, while more than 100 oth­er pris­on­ers have died on death row.

In an 8 – 1 deci­sion in Kansas v. Carr, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the deci­sions of the Kansas Supreme Court grant­i­ng new sen­tenc­ing hear­ings in three cap­i­tal cas­es, restor­ing the death sen­tences of Jonathan Carr, Reginald Carr, Jr., and Sidney Gleason pend­ing fur­ther appel­late review. The Kansas Supreme Court had vacat­ed the men’s death sen­tences because the jury had not been…

Florida​’s death row would be three-quar­ters small­er if the state fol­lowed the prac­tice of all but two oth­er states and required that a jury unan­i­mous­ly agree that a death sen­tence can be imposed before a defen­dant can be sen­tenced to death. Alabama and Delaware also per­mit judges to impose death sen­tences fol­low­ing non-unan­i­mous jury recommendations for…

On Martin Luther King Day, DPIC looks at the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s views on capital…

As Texas read­ies itself to exe­cute Richard Masterson (pic­tured), his lawyers have filed new plead­ings ques­tion­ing whether any mur­der occurred at all and are seek­ing a stay of exe­cu­tion based on what they say is ​“evi­dence of State fraud, mis­con­duct, and his actu­al inno­cence.” Masterson’s fil­ings chal­lenge the foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny pre­sent­ed by the pros­e­cu­tion in the case, the accu­ra­cy of instruc­tions giv­en to jurors, and the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Texas’ lethal…

Florida exe­cu­tions are plagued by stark racial, gen­der, and geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties, accord­ing to a new University of North Carolina study, with exe­cu­tions 6.5 times more like­ly for mur­ders of white female vic­tims than for mur­ders of black males. (See graph, left. Click to enlarge.). UNC Chapel Hill Professor Frank Baumgartner exam­ined data from the 89 exe­cu­tions con­duct­ed in Florida between 1976 — when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Florida’s use of the death penal­ty — and…

On Sunday, January 10, 60 Minutes aired an inter­view with Anthony Ray Hinton, who was exon­er­at­ed on April 3, 2015 after spend­ing near­ly 30 years on Alabama​’s death row. In the inter­view, Hinton described how issues of race per­me­at­ed his case. Hinton told 60 Minutes cor­re­spon­dent Scott Pelley about a con­ver­sa­tion he had with a police lieu­tenant after hav­ing been arrest­ed: ​“I said, ​‘You got the wrong guy.’ And he said, ​‘I don’t care whether you did it or…

In an 8 – 1 deci­sion in Hurst v. Florida released on January 12, the U.S. Supreme Court found Florida’s cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing scheme in vio­la­tion of the 6^th Amendment, which guar­an­tees the right to tri­al by jury. ​“The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact nec­es­sary to impose a sen­tence of death,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the opin­ion of the Court. The jury and judge in Hurst’s case fol­lowed Florida’s statu­to­ry sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dure, which…

On January 7, the Connecticut Supreme Court heard argu­ments in State of Connecticut v. Russell Peeler, in which state pros­e­cu­tors are seek­ing to over­turn the court’s 4 – 3 deci­sion last sum­mer declar­ing Connecticut’s death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The court ruled in August in State v. Santiago that Connecticut’s prospec­tive leg­isla­tive repeal of the death penal­ty, in com­bi­na­tion with ​“the state’s near total mora­to­ri­um on car­ry­ing out executions over…

In a recent arti­cle in Slate, Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the uni­ver­si­ty’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, says ​“the death penal­ty is col­laps­ing under the weight of its own cor­rup­tion and cru­el­ty.” He empha­sizes the increas­ing iso­la­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to a few out­lier juris­dic­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly high­light­ing Caddo Parish, Louisiana. Caddo Parish received nation­al atten­tion when, short­ly after the exoneration…