Publications & Testimony

In 2009, Maryland changed its cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment law, sharply lim­it­ing when the death penal­ty could be sought. Prosecutors can only pur­sue the death penal­ty in cas­es of first degree mur­der when there is DNA or oth­er bio­log­i­cal evi­dence link­ing the defen­dant to a mur­der, a video-taped con­fes­sion by the defen­dant, or a video link­ing the defen­dant to the mur­der. As the first case test­ing this statute nears com­ple­tion, DPIC’s Executive Director, Richard Dieter (pic­tured), was…

On February 15, Florida is sched­uled to exe­cute Robert Waterhouse, a 65-year-old inmate who was sen­tenced to death for a 1980 mur­der in St. Petersburg. Waterhouse has been on Florida’s death row for over three decades, longer than any inmate pre­vi­ous­ly exe­cut­ed by the state. His orig­i­nal death sen­tence was over­turned in 1988 after his appel­late attor­ney argued that Waterhouse’s tri­al lawyer erred by not pre­sent­ing the court with impor­tant mitigating…

Ron Briggs, spon­sor of the ini­tia­tive which expand­ed California​’s death penal­ty law in 1978, recent­ly announced his sup­port for repeal of the law. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Ron Briggs explained that the 1978 Briggs Initiative was meant to ​“give pros­e­cu­tors bet­ter tools for met­ing out just pun­ish­ments, and that a broad­ened statute would serve as a warn­ing to all California evil­do­ers that the state would deliv­er swift and final jus­tice” and ​“creat[e] a national…

Raymond Bonner’s new book, Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, is about to be pub­lished and was not­ed ear­li­er by DPIC. An excerpt from the book appeared recent­ly in The Atlantic. Andrew Cohen, also writ­ing in The Atlantic, called it ​“the book of the cen­tu­ry about the death penal­ty.” Cohen com­ment­ed that ​“Bonner’s book comes at a cru­cial time in the mod­ern his­to­ry of the death penal­ty. It comes at a time when views are…

The first hear­ing under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act con­vened at the begin­ning of February for death row inmate Marcus Robinson. The Racial Justice Act was passed in 2009, allow­ing death row inmates to use empir­i­cal and sta­tis­ti­cal data to demon­strate racial bias in their con­vic­tion or sen­tenc­ing. Following changes in North Carolina’s leg­is­la­ture in the 2010 elec­tions, there were efforts to repeal the Act. Governor Perdue vetoed a repeal bill and the…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund​’s Death Row USA shows a decrease of 31 inmates between January 1 and July 1, 2011. Over the last decade, the total pop­u­la­tion of state and fed­er­al death rows has decreased sig­nif­i­cant­ly, from 3,682 inmates in 2000 to 3,220 inmates in 2011. The per­cent­age of Latino inmates fac­ing exe­cu­tion, how­ev­er, has steadi­ly increased over the years. In 1991, Latinos made up 6% of the nation’s death row. In 2011, Latinos…

(Winner: Silver Medal in the U.S. History cat­e­go­ry in the Independent Publisher Book Awards). A new book by Professor John D. Bessler, titled Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders’ Eighth Amendment, chal­lenges the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom that the coun­try’s founders were avid death penal­ty sup­port­ers, and explores their var­i­ous views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Prof. Bessler dis­cuss­es how the indis­crim­i­nate use of executions…

Edwin Turner (pic­tured), a death row inmate in Mississippi, is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on February 8. His attor­ney, Jim Craig, has peti­tioned the U.S. Supreme Court and Governor Phil Bryant for a reprieve, based in part on Turner’s men­tal ill­ness. Craig said, ​“The Supreme Court has not decid­ed the ques­tion of whether a pris­on­er with a severe men­tal dis­or­der or dis­abil­i­ty which sig­nif­i­cant­ly impairs that person’s abil­i­ty to ratio­nal­ly process infor­ma­tion, to…

Roger Hood (pic­tured), Professor Emeritus of Criminology at the University of Oxford, has pub­lished a report on offi­cial atti­tudes towards cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in China. Abolition of the Death Penalty: China in World Perspective out­lines the changes over the past decade on this issue with­in Chinese aca­d­e­m­ic and judi­cial com­mu­ni­ties. Hood observed that one of the strongest jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for the death penal­ty in China is ​“the belief that ret­ri­bu­tion based on the notion…