Publications & Testimony

Records obtained by the Bay Area News Group in California show that the appeal costs for the last two men exe­cut­ed in the state were $1.76 mil­lion. At that rate, the cost of car­ry­ing out the exe­cu­tions of the 724 inmates still on death row could exceed $700 mil­lion if the death penal­ty is not repealed in November. Records show that the state and fed­er­al appeals for Clarence Ray Allen, the old­est and most recent death row inmate exe­cut­ed in the state, cost more…

Use of the death penal­ty has decreased in South Carolina, and some state offi­cials are point­ing to the high costs and uncer­tain­ty of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as rea­sons for this decline. The state has had only one exe­cu­tion in the past three years, and the size of death row has declined almost 30% since 2005. No one was sen­tenced to death in 2011. Prosecutor David Pascoe ini­tial­ly planned to seek the death penal­ty for a moth­er who killed her two chil­dren, but…

A new study con­duct­ed by researchers at Duke University found that the racial com­po­si­tion of jury pools has a pro­found effect on the prob­a­bil­i­ty of a black defen­dant being con­vict­ed. According to the study led by Professor Patrick Bayer of Duke, juries formed from all-white jury pools in Florida con­vict­ed black defen­dants 16 per­cent more often than white defen­dants. In cas­es with no black poten­tial jurors in the jury pool, black defendants were…

Recently pub­lished his­tor­i­cal research led by Professor Austin Sarat (pic­tured) of Amherst College exam­ines the way grue­some exe­cu­tions were report­ed in the media in the late 19^th and ear­ly 20^th cen­turies. Prof. Sarat’s study found that news­pa­pers gen­er­al­ly pre­sent­ed two com­pet­ing nar­ra­tives in their cov­er­age:​“a sen­sa­tion­al­ist nar­ra­tive, which played up the grue­some­ness of botched execution[s], and an oppos­ing, recu­per­a­tive nar­ra­tive, which sought to…

General News Articles — — — — — — — Earlier Proposal for Federal Trials U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder had announced that five men being held in Guantanamo prison in con­nec­tion with the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center will face tri­al in fed­er­al court in New York City: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Walid bin Attash, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi and Ramzi bin al-Shibh. These defen­dants could face the fed­er­al death penal­ty. (C. Savage,…

Controversies sur­round­ing the lethal drugs used in U.S. exe­cu­tions con­tin­ue to arise in many states. Documents obtained by the Associated Press reveal the secre­tive process in which the Delaware Department of Corrections obtained the drugs nec­es­sary for the its lethal injec­tion process. Delaware offi­cials solicit­ed the help of the state’s Economic Development Director, Alan Levin, in obtain­ing lethal injec­tion drugs after its pre­vi­ous sup­ply expired in 2005.

Commentary from nation­al­ly syn­di­cat­ed colum­nist E.J. Dionne (pic­tured) and the New York Times reflect­ed on the chang­ing state of the death penal­ty in the U.S. in light of recent devel­op­ments. Dionne cit­ed the repeal of the death penal­ty in Connecticut as an exam­ple of a​“remark­able piv­ot in the pol­i­tics of the death penal­ty, the pre­mier issue on which an over­whelm­ing con­sen­sus favor­ing what’s tak­en to be…

In the lat­est edi­tion of the Death Penalty Information Center’s pod­casts, Professor Michael H. Fox, direc­tor of the Japan Innocence and Death Penalty Research Center, dis­cuss­es the cur­rent state of the death penal­ty in Japan. Prof. Fox com­pares pub­lic opin­ion on the death penal­ty in Japan and the U.S., explains some of the unique aspects of Japan’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, and dis­cuss­es the prospects for change. Click here to…

In a recent op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for­mer U.S. President Jimmy Carter called for the end of the death penal­ty. President Carter cit­ed the risk of wrong­ful exe­cu­tions, the lack of evi­dence of deter­rence, and the costs of pros­e­cu­tion as rea­sons to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. He wrote, “[T]here has nev­er been any evi­dence that the death penal­ty reduces cap­i­tal crimes or that crimes increased when exe­cu­tions stopped. Tragic…

A new book pub­lished in elec­tron­ic for­mat, The Death Penalty Failed Experiment: From Gary Graham to Troy Davis in Context by Diann Rust-Tierney, exam­ines the prob­lem of arbi­trari­ness in the death penal­ty since its rein­state­ment in 1976. Through an analy­sis of the cas­es of Gary Graham and Troy Davis, the author argues that race, wealth and geog­ra­phy play a more sig­nif­i­cant role in deter­min­ing who faces cap­i­tal punishment than…