Publications & Testimony

Jeffrey Havard (pic­tured) is fac­ing exe­cu­tion in Mississippi despite the fact that key evi­dence against him came from a med­ical exam­in­er who has been harsh­ly crit­i­cized by experts in his field. Havard was con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing his girlfriend’s 6‑month-old daugh­ter, based pri­mar­i­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of Steven Hayne, a state pathol­o­gist. Dr. Hayne tes­ti­fied he found symp­toms of​“shak­en baby syn­drome” and sex­u­al abuse on the…

On January 8, the U.S. Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly reject­ed indef­i­nite delays in the fed­er­al review of death penal­ty cas­es when inmates are men­tal­ly incom­pe­tent to assist their attor­neys. Writing for the Court, Justice Clarence Thomas said such appeals are usu­al­ly based on estab­lished facts, not requir­ing fur­ther input from the defen­dant.​“Given the back­­ward-look­ing, record-based nature of most fed­er­al habeas pro­ceed­ings, coun­sel can generally…

In his recent Sidebar col­umn, Adam Liptak, Supreme Court reporter for the New York Times, dis­cussed the plight that Alabama death row inmate Ronald Smith suf­fered at the hands of a drug-addic­t­ed lawyer and an unsym­pa­thet­ic court. In December, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that Smith could not chal­lenge his con­vic­tion and sen­tence because his lawyer failed to prop­er­ly file his…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in Florida​’s Tampa Bay Times called for law­mak­ers to study the state’s death penal­ty because of its high num­ber of exon­er­a­tions and death sen­tences. Using infor­ma­tion from DPIC’s recent 2012 Year End Report, the edi­to­r­i­al not­ed that 2012 marked the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year in which the state led the coun­try in new death sen­tences. The edi­to­r­i­al sug­gest­ed that one of the rea­sons for these numbers was…

As leg­isla­tive ses­sions begin across the coun­try, leg­is­la­tors in sev­er­al states have pro­posed bills to abol­ish or reform the death penal­ty in 2013. In Alabama, Sen. Hank Sanders will intro­duce bills to abol­ish the death penal­ty, or alter­na­tive­ly to insti­tute a series of reforms.​“I believe the death penal­ty is not only unpro­duc­tive but counter-pro­­duc­­tive,” he said. Texas will also con­sid­er a num­ber of death penal­ty reform bills,…

DPIC’s 2012 Year End Report received exten­sive media cov­er­age in the U.S. and inter­na­tion­al­ly. Coverage includ­ed pieces by the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, Reuters, New York Times, CNN, and hun­dreds of oth­er out­lets. National broad­cast out­lets such as NPR, MSNBC, and CBS Radio also ran pieces. Many papers…

Following the themes of DPIC’s 2012 Year End Report, the lead edi­to­r­i­al for Jan. 2 in the New York Times con­clud­ed that​“cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is cru­el and unusu­al” as judged by the coun­try’s​“evolv­ing stan­dards” of decen­cy and​“should be abol­ished” by the Supreme Court. The Times​’s edi­to­r­i­al not­ed the few­er num­ber of states car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions, the lack of any mean­ing­ful ratio­nale, the…

For in-depth analy­sis, view DPIC’s Report: The 2% Death Penalty: How a Minority of Counties Produce Most Death Cases at Enormous Costs to…

DPIC…

Professor Victor L. Streib of the Ohio Northern University College of Law ana­lyzed the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the women on death row as of December 2012. He found that the ages of the women then on death row ranged from age 28 to 79 years old. They had been on death row from a few months to more…