Publications & Testimony

According to Gary Syphus of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst’s Office in Utah, seek­ing the death penal­ty costs the state an addi­tion­al $1.6 mil­lion per inmate from tri­al to exe­cu­tion com­pared to life-with­out-parole cas­es. Syphus offered this esti­mate to the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Interim Committee of the Utah leg­is­la­ture on November 14. Republican state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Steve Handy had asked for an exam­i­na­tion of the state and local gov­ern­ment costs asso­ci­at­ed with…

New Hampshire State Representative Renny Cushing (pic­tured), whose father and broth­er-in-law were mur­dered, is one of many mem­bers of the state’s leg­is­la­ture who sup­ports repeal of the death penal­ty. ​“Everyone is mov­ing away from the death penal­ty. It’s clear New Hampshire isn’t in love with the death penal­ty. We haven’t exe­cut­ed any­one since 1939,” Cushing said. New Hampshire’s only death row inmate cur­rent­ly has an appeal before the state Supreme Court. A death penalty…

The Texas Attorney General’s Office has released par­tial results of DNA test­ing long request­ed by attor­neys for death row inmate Hank Skinner. Although the results are incom­plete and reveal the pres­ence of anoth­er unknown per­son, the state is claim­ing the tests con­firm Skinner’s involve­ment in the mur­der of his live-in girl­friend, Twila Busby, and her two adult sons in 1993. Skinner had been seek­ing addi­tion­al DNA test­ing since 2000 even while exe­cu­tion dates…

A Texas Court of Inquiry is set to review alle­ga­tions of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct by for­mer District Attorney Kenneth Anderson, who with­held crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion in a first-degree mur­der case in Williamson County. Although pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct has played a role in many wrong­ful con­vic­tions, includ­ing death penal­ty cas­es, such an over­sight hear­ing is unusu­al. Sam Millsap, the for­mer District Attorney of Bexar County, Texas, said, ​“I’d love to be able to tell you I am the…

No new death sen­tences were imposed in North Carolina in 2012, mark­ing the first time since 1977 that this has occurred. The state had a record-low of four cap­i­tal tri­als in 2012. Thomas Maher, exec­u­tive direc­tor of North Carolina’s Indigent Defense Services, said, ​“In some ways, it’s a mile­stone. In oth­er ways, it’s part of a trend.” In 2000, juries in the state presided at 57 cap­i­tal tri­als, ulti­mate­ly yield­ing 18 death sen­tences. In 2011, there were 12 cap­i­tal trials…

According to the 2012 American Values Survey con­duct­ed by the Public Religion Research Institute, Americans are now even­ly divid­ed on whether the death penal­ty or life with­out parole is the appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment for mur­der, while Catholics more strong­ly favor life sen­tences. The September sur­vey found that 47% of respon­dents favored life with­out parole, while 46% opt­ed for the death penal­ty. The poll showed that life with­out parole was favored by Democrats (57%),…

On October 29, the U.S. Justice Department released the annu­al FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2011, indi­cat­ing that the nation­al mur­der rate dropped 1.5% from 2010. This decline occurred at a time when the use of the death penal­ty is also decreas­ing nation­al­ly. The Northeast region, which uses the death penal­ty the least, had the low­est mur­der rate of the 4 geo­graph­ic regions, and saw a 6.4% fur­ther decrease in its mur­der rate in 2011, the largest decrease of…

On November 6, 2012, California​’s Proposition 34, an ini­tia­tive to replace the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out parole, was nar­row­ly defeat­ed by a vote of 53% to 47%. Although the result means the death penal­ty will con­tin­ue in the state, the per­cent of vot­ers sup­port­ing repeal rep­re­sents a dra­mat­ic shift away from cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The ref­er­en­dum, which indi­cat­ed just more than half of vot­ers are in favor of keep­ing the death penal­ty, fol­lows a broad­er trend…

UPDATE: Execution stayed by fed­er­al court on Nov. 8 to allow time for appeal. Pennsylvania is plan­ning to use drugs in an upcom­ing exe­cu­tion that are not reg­u­lat­ed by the fed­er­al Food and Drug Administration but rather are made to order by a com­pound­ing phar­ma­cy. A com­pound­ing phar­ma­cy has been impli­cat­ed in the dead­ly menin­gi­tis out­break in the U.S. caused by con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed drugs. In Missouri, the Pharmacy Board test­ed claimed drug dosages from com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies from 2006…