Publications & Testimony

On October 4, Ohio announced it will be obtaining its execution drug, pentobarbital, from a compounding pharmacy if it is not available from the manufacturer. Texas made a similar announcement a few days earler. In the past, some compounding pharmacies have been implicated in providing contaminated drugs with fatal side effects. These local companies are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Florida announced it will be using a new drug, midazolam, in its October 15 execution. The…

Since DPIC released its new report, The 2% Death Penalty, on October 2, both national and international media have been reporting on its findings. The Washington Post noted, “Two percent of the counties in the country were responsible for [most] 685 of 1,320 executions from 1976, when the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, to 2012.” The Los Angeles Times, quoted DPIC’s Executive Director, “‘The death penalty is not as American or as widespread as people might assume. It is clustered in…

On October 2 the Death Penalty Information Center released a new report, The 2% Death Penalty: How a Minority of Counties Produce Most Death Cases at Enormous Costs to All. The report shows that, contrary to the assumption that the death penalty is widely used in the U.S., only a few jurisdictions employ capital punishment extensively. Only 2% of the counties in the U.S. have been responsible for the majority of cases leading to executions since 1976. Likewise, only 2% of the counties are…

An analysis of the death penalty in Utah shows how rarely it has been used in recent years. Prosecutors have sought it in only 7 cases in the last 5 years, and none has resulted in a death sentence. Utah has had only 1 execution in the past 13 years. Experts have offered several reasons for the declining use: the alternative sentence of life without parole is now avaialble; the appeal of a death sentence is costly and slow; and many victims’ families wish to see a more timely end to the…

A recent Boston Globe editorial called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder not to seek the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man accused of carrying out the bombing at the Boston Marathon. The editors said the lengthy death-penalty process would put the spotlight on the defendant to the detriment of the victims: “Years of proceedings, and their potential culmination in a death sentence, would also give Tsarnaev what he and his brother apparently sought: publicity and notoriety. Much…

On September 26, the Joint Task Force to Review the Administration of Ohio’s Death Penalty voted 15 – 2 to recommend a ban on death sentences for people with severe mental illness. The panel of legal experts was created by the Ohio Supreme Court and the Ohio State Bar Association and includes judges, attorneys, and legislators. Their proposal will be submitted with other recommendations to the governor and the General Assembly in 2014. Terry Russell, executive director of the National Alliance on…

Grave Injustice, a new book by Richard Stack, presents a critical examination of the death penalty through profiles of individuals who were executed but may have been innocent. Their stories are used to illustrate flaws in the death penalty, including faulty eyewitness identification, government misconduct, and ineffective representation. In examining these problems, Stack writes that the possible end of the death penalty “will not be based on its immorality…but on its poor track record… and…

Legislators in Kansas have said they may debate the repeal of the death penalty in 2014. Senate Vice President Jeff King said a recent session on other criminal justice issues indicated a need for a broader discussion of sentences for murder. Senator David Haley, who supports repeal of the death penalty, said, “I believe now is the time for a discussion among those in the Legislature who consider religion a main part of their public service to decide whether it’s necessary for a barbaric and…

One of the nation’s leading academic experts on the death penalty has written a new article describing how the controversy surrounding lethal injections has greatly intensified since the Supreme Court’s ruling on the subject in 2008 (Baze v. Rees). Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University, analyzed over 300 court decisions in the last five years citing Baze. She found there have been more changes in lethal injection protocols in that time than in the last 30 years, some of which…