Publications & Testimony

In an op-ed for the Orlando Sentinel, former Florida Supreme Court Justice Raoul Cantero (pictured) and ABA Death Penalty Assessment Team member Mark Schlakman call on the Florida legislature to repair the constitutional violations in Florida’s capital sentencing scheme. The U.S. Supreme Court found in Hurst v. Florida that the state’s sentencing process violates the Sixth Amendment because a jury does not unanimously find the aggravating factors that justify a death sentence. Cantero and…

A decline in executions is likely in Missouri after two years of unusually high numbers. In 2014, Missouri tied with Texas for the most executions in the U.S., and it was second to Texas in 2015. However, changing attitudes about the death penalty — similar to national shifts — are evident in Missouri’s sentencing trends: no one was sentenced to death in Missouri in 2014 or 2015, and less than one person per year has been sentenced to death in the past seven years. Moreover, a bill with bi-partisan…

Criminal Justice Committee, Florida Senate: Materials from hearing on revisions to Florida’s death penalty statute in light of Hurst v. Florida featuring testimony of Robert Dunham, Executive Director, Death Penalty Information Center (Tallahassee, January 27, 2016). Mr. Dunham’s testimony begins at the 11:30 mark of the video of the Senate Committee Meeting.

A recent survey of Californians conducted by The Field Poll found that voters are evenly split between wanting to speed up the execution process (48%) and supporting repeal of the death penalty and replacing it with life without parole (47%). Support for repeal has grown since 2014, when the question was last asked. At that time, 40% favored replacing the death penalty with life without parole and 52% supported speeding up the process. Californians may face a choice between the two options in…

Dawn Mancarella, whose mother, Joyce Masury, was murdered 20 years ago, called the death penalty “a waste of energy and money [that] doesn’t bring justice or closure.” Sharing her views on the death penalty in a column for Connecticut’s Register Citizen, Mancarella expressed support for the Connecticut Supreme Court’s 2015 decision declaring the death penalty “incompatible with contemporary standards of decency in Connecticut.” “It’s disappointing to see that the court is re-visiting this…

In a recent op-ed for The Denver Post, retired corrections officer and military veteran Pete Lister offered a critique of the death penalty, saying it fails as a deterrent, risks executing innocent people, and costs more than life without parole. “Capital punishment has not, in a single state, proven to be a deterrent to capital crime.” Lister said. “Society consists of human beings who make mistakes. There are those who are, occasionally, negligent, and some who are even dishonest or…

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. Prisoners wait 11 – 15 years to be appointed counsel, and the…

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 informed, as required by the Kansas Supreme Court, that mitigating factors presented during the sentencing…

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 death. After an 18-month investigation into the cases of Florida’s 390 death-row prisoners, The Villages Daily Sun found that judges had…

On Martin Luther King Day, DPIC looks at the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s views on capital punishment. In a November 1957 article in Ebony, Dr. King was asked “Do you think God approves the death penalty for crimes like rape and murder?” He responded, “I do not think that God approves the death penalty for any crime, rape and murder included…. Capital punishment is against the better judgment of modern criminology, and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of…