Publications & Testimony

In a petition to the Ohio Parole Board, Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty (pictured) requested the death sentence of Arthur Tyler be reduced to life in prison without parole. McGinty said, “At the time of Tyler’s trial, Ohio law did not allow for the possibility of a sentence of life without parole for an aggravated murder conviction….In light of the limited sentencing options, the absence of the option of a sentence of life without the possibility of parole in this case may have led to…

UPDATE: On April 23, the Oklahoma Supreme Court held that the inmates facing execution do not have a right to be informed of the source of the drugs that will be used in their executions. The Court lifted the stays of execution, which means they could occur on April 29. ‑Earlier: On April 21, the Oklahoma Supreme Court indefinitely stayed the executions of Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner so it could resolve the constitutionality of a state law making the sources of its lethal injection drugs…

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles will soon consider the clemency petition of Robert Holsey describing a near complete failure in the judicial process that sent him to death row in 1997. As Marc Bookman described in the latest edition of Mother Jones, Holsey was assigned a lawyer, Andy Prince, who consumed a quart of vodka every night of the trial. While preparing Holsey’s case, he was arrested in an incident after pointing a gun at a black neighbor and using a racial slur. Despite…

UPDATE: (4/21). The Oklahoma Supreme Court (5 – 4) has stayed the executions of Lockett and Warner. Earlier:In a 3 – 2 decision on April 18, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) said it could not grant a stay of execution to two death row inmates facing imminent execution because they had not filed a proper motion. Earlier, the Oklahoma Supreme Court said the OCCA should be the court to grant a stay, especially since there were unsettled questions about the constitutionality of the state’s…

On April 17, the New Hampshire Senate voted 12 – 12 on a bill to repeal the death penalty. The Senate then voted to table the bill, meaning it could be brought up for reconsideration later in the legislative session. New Hampshire has not had an execution since 1939 and has only 1 person on death row, whose status would not have been affected by the bill. The bill had overwhelmingly passed the House earlier, and Gov. Maggie Hassan indicated she would have signed the bill if it passed the Senate.

A new study published by Professors Jon Gould (l.) of American University and Richard Leo of the University of San Francisco, along with other researchers, examined factors that have contributed to wrongful convictions in criminal cases. The study compared cases in which “guilty” defendants were eventually exonerated to those in which defendants were not convicted in the first place. The researchers found a number of variables that separated wrongful convictions from so-called “near misses,”…

In advance of a New Hampshire Senate vote expected on April 17, the Boston Globe published an editorial calling on their neighboring state’s legislators to support repeal of capital punishment. The editorial highlighted the bipartisan support for abolition in the New Hampshire House, and Gov. Maggie Hassan’s pledge to sign the repeal bill if it passes the Senate. Among their reasons for endorsing the measure, the Globe said, “Death-penalty prosecutions are expensive, verdicts often reflect…

DPIC recently published a new page that presents execution data for each state and each year since 1976. This allows users to more easily see execution trends in states over time. We have also recently posted updated state data from “Death Row, USA.” As of October 1, 2013, there were 3,088 inmates on death row, continuing the decline in death row population since 2000. As developments surrounding lethal injection continue to emerge, users can find current information on our State-by-State…

In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, attorneys Megan McCracken and Jennifer Moreno argued that the veil of secrecy that many states have placed over their execution process violates defendants’ constitutional rights and “deprives the public of informed debate.” The authors provided numerous examples where inmates executed with drugs from compounding pharmacies or with novel mixes of new drugs exhibited signs of consciousness and suffering. However, inmates whose executions are rapidly…

On April 14, the North Carolina Supreme Court will hear appeals in the cases of the four inmates whose death sentences were reduced to life without parole under the state’s Racial Justice Act. North Carolina passed the Act in 2009, allowing death row inmates to use statistical studies to show that racial bias affected their trials. The first four cases were heard in 2012. The evidence presented at hearings for defendants Marcus Robinson (l.), Tilmon Golphin, Quintel Augustine, and Christina…