Publications & Testimony

(On January 10, DPIC post­ed an item about an edi­to­r­i­al in the New York Times crit­i­ciz­ing the arbi­trari­ness of the death penal­ty. That edi­to­r­i­al relied heav­i­ly on the research of Prof. John Donohue (pic­tured) of Stanford Law School and his study of the Connecticut death penal­ty. This post looks fur­ther at the under­ly­ing study.) Prof. Donohue’s research found that out of thou­sands of mur­ders com­mit­ted in Connecticut between 1973 and 2007, only one result­ed in an…

On January 12, HBO cable TV will air a new doc­u­men­tary, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, the final install­ment of a tril­o­gy that recounts the sto­ry of three wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed teenagers in Arkansas–Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley – known as the ​“West Memphis Three.” The young men were con­vict­ed of the 1993 rape and mur­der of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. Baldwin and Misskelley received life sen­tences, and Echols was sentenced…

An edi­to­r­i­al in the Sunday edi­tion of the New York Times on January 8 looked at recent stud­ies point­ing to the arbi­trari­ness of the death penal­ty. The edi­to­r­i­al not­ed that the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1972 because its arbi­trary imple­men­ta­tion ren­dered it uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. In par­tic­u­lar, the Times cit­ed a recent study of Connecticut’s death penal­ty indi­cat­ing the death penal­ty was not being imposed on the worst…

Over 400 media out­lets around the coun­try report­ed on DPIC’s recent 2011 Year-End Report. Coverage includ­ed sto­ries on the dra­mat­ic drop in death sen­tences, the decline in exe­cu­tions, and few­er states hav­ing the death penal­ty. Articles appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, Reuters, USA Today, CNN, TIME, and many oth­er papers. National broad­cast out­lets such as NBC’s Nightly News, National Public…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund​’s ​“Death Row USA” showed a decrease of 29 inmates in the death row pop­u­la­tion between January 1 and April 1, 2011. The total pop­u­la­tion of state and fed­er­al death rows is sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er now (3,222 inmates) than in 2000 (3,682 inmates). The size of death row is affect­ed by the num­ber of death sen­tences, the num­ber of exe­cu­tions, and the num­ber of sen­tence rever­sals. Nationally, the racial com­po­si­tion of those on death…

Some Georgia death row inmates may soon be with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion for their appeals, poten­tial­ly delay­ing the entire death penal­ty process. The Georgia Bar Foundation has tra­di­tion­al­ly pro­vid­ed funds to the Georgia Appellate Practice and Educational Resource Center, a twelve-per­son non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that rep­re­sents or assists most of the 90 inmates on Georgia’s death row. Because of the eco­nom­ic down­turn, the Foundation’s col­lec­tions have declined in recent years and…

On January 3, attor­neys for Robert Gattis (pic­tured) filed a clemen­cy peti­tion with the Delaware Board of Pardons, request­ing they rec­om­mend com­mut­ing his death sen­tence to life with­out parole. Gattis is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on January 20. According to the peti­tion, details of fre­quent sex­u­al, phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse occur­ing dur­ing Gattis’s child­hood were nev­er pre­sent­ed to the jury or the judge at the time of his sen­tenc­ing. As a pre-school…

New Hampshire state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Phil Greazzo, who has pro­posed a broad expan­sion of the death penal­ty, will also offer an alter­na­tive bill to abol­ish the death penal­ty entire­ly because it is so unfair. Rep. Greazzo, a Republican, pre­vi­ous­ly intro­duced leg­is­la­tion to expand the state’s death penal­ty to include any inten­tion­al mur­der, main­tain­ing the law should pro­tect all peo­ple equal­ly. But he said he would rather have law­mak­ers do away…