Publications & Testimony

A recent review of death penal­ty cas­es in Pennsylvania con­duct­ed by the Philadelphia Inquirer (see ear­li­er DPIC post) has revealed a pat­tern of inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel lead­ing to exten­sive delays and rever­sals of death sen­tences. When the cas­es are lit­i­gat­ed a sec­ond time, now with more com­pe­tent rep­re­sen­ta­tion, they fre­quent­ly do not result in a death sen­tence. Prosecutors have called the sys­tem a great dis­ser­vice to vic­tims’ families.

On October 27, a group of for­mer Texas judges, pros­e­cu­tors and law enforce­ment offi­cers deliv­ered a let­ter to Governor Rick Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbott and District Attorney Lynn Switzer request­ing DNA tests for death row inmate Hank Skinner. Signatories to the let­ter include: Mark White, for­mer Governor of Texas (pic­tured); Morris L. Overstreet, for­mer Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals; Sam Millsap, for­mer Bexar County…

A broad range of cit­i­zens in California launched a sig­na­ture cam­paign on October 25 to replace the death penal­ty with life in prison and no parole through a bal­lot ini­tia­tive in November 2012. The sig­na­ture dri­ve was announced at the city hall in San Francisco and was attend­ed by mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and law enforce­ment offi­cials, such as San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey (pic­tured), who sup­port the mea­sure. Hennessey cit­ed a study released last…

A recent CNN per­spec­tive exam­ined the views of those they called ​“the most unlike­ly oppo­nents of the death penal­ty, peo­ple who lost loved ones to unspeak­able vio­lence yet believe exe­cut­ing the killer will do noth­ing for fam­i­ly mem­bers or soci­ety.” For exam­ple, Ross Byrd, the son of James Byrd, Jr., who was dragged to his death behind a truck in Texas by Lawrence Brewer, nev­er­the­less object­ed to Brewer’s exe­cu­tion, say­ing ​“You can’t fight mur­der with…

A recent report from the Pennsylvania Advisory Committee on Wrongful Convictions called for seri­ous reforms in the state’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The com­mit­tee, which was instruct­ed to iden­ti­fy the most com­mon caus­es of wrong­ful con­vic­tions (some of which were cap­i­tal cas­es) and any cur­rent laws and pro­ce­dures impli­cat­ed in each type of cau­sa­tion, found that, ​“under [the cur­rent] insti­tu­tion­al struc­ture, defen­dants have been pun­ished for crimes they did not commit.

DPIC is pleased to announce the addi­tion of five more states to our State Information Pages. Information is now avail­able for 25 states, includ­ing the lat­est entries: Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Massachusetts and New York. These pages pro­vide his­tor­i­cal and cur­rent infor­ma­tion on the death penal­ty for each state (regard­less of whether it cur­rent­ly has the death penal­ty), includ­ing famous…

On October 19, five African Americans filed a fed­er­al civ­il rights law­suit charg­ing that Alabama has ille­gal­ly exclud­ed blacks from serv­ing on death penal­ty juries in Houston and Henry Counties. The plain­tiffs in this class action suit were all pre­vi­ous­ly barred from serv­ing on juries in cap­i­tal or oth­er seri­ous felony cas­es. In each case, state courts found blacks were ille­gal­ly exclud­ed from jury ser­vice because of their race. Bryan Stevenson, lead attorney…