Publications & Testimony

Criminal Justice Professor James Acker of the University at Albany recent­ly dis­cussed the deci­sion by the District Attorney to seek the death penal­ty against James Holmes, the man accused of killing 12 peo­ple and wound­ing many oth­ers at a movie the­ater in Aurora, Colorado. In addi­tion to con­cerns about the defen­dan­t’s pos­si­ble men­tal ill­ness, Acker raised a num­ber of ques­tions about this course of action:​“Will the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies somehow be…

Since the 1990s, almost every death penal­ty state has expe­ri­enced a dra­mat­ic decline in its annu­al num­ber of death sen­tences. DPIC has pre­pared a series of graphs illus­trat­ing this trend in each state: State Death Sentences by Year. This page con­tains graphs show­ing the annu­al num­ber of new sen­tences in each state between 1994 and 2012. These same graphs can be found indi­vid­u­al­ly on each state’s State Information page. Nationally, there…

A new inter­na­tion­al man­u­al cov­er­ing psy­chi­atric and psy­cho­log­i­cal issues aris­ing in cap­i­tal cas­es has been pre­pared by a team of foren­sic psy­chi­a­trists for use by attor­neys, judges, and men­tal health offi­cials. The Handbook of Forensic Psychiatric Practice in Capital Cases sets out mod­el struc­tures for psy­chi­atric assess­ment and report writ­ing for every stage of a death penal­ty case, from pre-tri­al to exe­cu­tion. It also dis­cuss­es ethical issues,…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Nebraska Star-Herald indi­cat­ed a shift in its posi­tion on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Although the paper has always sup­port­ed the death penal­ty in the past, its lat­est edi­to­r­i­al described the death penal­ty as​“a mock­ery of jus­tice” and a​“cha­rade.” The edi­tors con­tin­ued to express the belief that some mur­der­ers might deserve cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, but the infre­quen­cy and unpredictability of…

On March 29 – 31, ​“Moyers & Company,” host­ed by Bill Moyers, will be explor­ing how the poor and minori­ties fare under our jus­tice sys­tem, and the death penal­ty in par­tic­u­lar. In​“And Justice for Some,” Moyers inter­views Martin Clancy and Tim O’Brien, the authors of the forth­com­ing Murder at the Supreme Court, and speaks with attor­ney and legal schol­ar Bryan Stevenson about the system’s fail­ings and strug­gles at the cross­roads of race, class and…

On March 26, Delaware​’s Senate passed (11 – 10) a bill to repeal the death penal­ty, after amend­ing it to exclude cur­rent death row inmates. Those who tes­ti­fied in sup­port of the repeal cit­ed racial dis­par­i­ties, a lack of deter­rent effect, and the high costs asso­ci­at­ed with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The bill will now move on to the House of Representatives, which is expect­ed to con­sid­er the mea­sure in April. On the same day,…

Controversies sur­round­ing lethal injec­tions con­tin­ue in many parts of the coun­try. In Georgia, the leg­is­la­ture passed a bill to clas­si­fy the names of those involved in exe­cu­tions as​“state secrets.” The bill requires the iden­ti­ty of any enti­ty that​“man­u­fac­tures, sup­plies, com­pounds or pre­scribes” lethal injec­tion drugs to be kept secret. In Arkansas, a state judge ruled that death row inmates can­not use the state’s Freedom of…

A new orga­ni­za­tion–Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty–made its debut at the recent 2013 Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) con­fer­ence near Washington, D.C. The group ques­tions whether cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment aligns with con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples and includes promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers from across the coun­try, includ­ing Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, Roy Brown, for­mer Montana House Majority…

A new doc­u­men­tary released by the Constitution Project and the New Media Advocacy Project com­mem­o­rates the 50^th anniver­sary of the Supreme Court’s land­mark 1963 deci­sion in Gideon v. Wainwright, requir­ing states to appoint lawyers for indi­gent defen­dants in crim­i­nal cas­es. Prior to this deci­sion, some states only pro­vid­ed attor­neys in cas­es with spe­cial cir­cum­stances, like death penal­ty cas­es. Defending Gideon is…

The Dallas Morning News used the recent repeal of the death penal­ty in Maryland as an occa­sion to advo­cate for death-penal­­ty reform in Texas. The edi­tors com­ment­ed on the over­all impro­pri­ety of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment:​“At best, the death penal­ty is selec­tive­ly used state-sup­­port­ed ret­ri­bu­tion, which has no place in a civ­i­lized soci­ety.” The edi­to­r­i­al sup­port­ed six pend­ing bills aimed at improv­ing the fair­ness of the…