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. 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…

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 injection secrecy law. Masterson is…

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 2014. Baumgartner…

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 don’t.’ He said, ‘But you gonna be…

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 requires only an “advisory…

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 the past fifty-five years,” established that…

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 of Glenn…