Publications & Testimony

A new video pro­duced by the American Civil Liberties Union fea­tures three North Carolina cit­i­zens who believe they were exclud­ed from serv­ing on juries in cap­i­tal cas­es because of their race. The video was released in con­junc­tion with the first court chal­lenge brought under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act. The defen­dant, Marcus Robinson, is ask­ing his death sen­tence be com­mut­ed to life with­out parole because poten­tial African-American…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in Nebraska​’s Journal Star urged sup­port for a bill to replace the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life in prison. Among the rea­sons cit­ed for its posi­tion was the risk of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son. The edi­to­r­i­al not­ed that advance­ments in DNA test­ing have shown the fal­li­bil­i­ty of the cur­rent sys­tem: ​“Seventeen peo­ple who were on death row have been set free after DNA test­ing proved they were wrong­ly con­vict­ed.” The edi­to­r­i­al also point­ed to…

Tyrone Noling (pic­tured) is an inmate on Ohio​’s death row whose guilt has been called into doubt by a lack of phys­i­cal evi­dence, recant­i­ng wit­ness­es and refusal by the state to con­duct a DNA test. Andrew Cohen, writ­ing in a recent issue of The Atlantic, com­pared Noling’s case to that of Troy Davis, who was exe­cut­ed in Georgia in 2011, despite doubts about his guilt. Noling was con­vict­ed of the 1990 mur­ders of an elder­ly cou­ple in their home.

DPIC is col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion on pend­ing leg­is­la­tion relat­ed to the death penal­ty. For exam­ple, at least nine states will con­sid­er bills to repeal the death penal­ty in 2012. In California, a coali­tion called Taxpayers for Justice has been col­lect­ing sig­na­tures to place a death penal­ty repeal ini­tia­tive on the bal­lot in November. On January 25, the Washington Senate Judiciary Committee held a pub­lic hear­ing on a bill to repeal the death penal­ty. The bill’s…

On January 18, the U.S. Supreme Court (7 – 2) ordered a new hear­ing in fed­er­al court for Cory Maples, an Alabama death row inmate whose state and fed­er­al appeals had been reject­ed by low­er courts because his lawyers quit and missed a crit­i­cal fil­ing dead­line. Writing for six of the Court’s Justices, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg high­light­ed the poor qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion offered by the state in death penal­ty cas­es. The…

Professor Victor Streib (pic­tured) of the Ohio Northern University Law School has pub­lished the lat­est edi­tion of his peri­od­ic reports, Death Penalty for Female Offenders. This study offers sta­tis­tics and infor­ma­tion relat­ed to women who have been exe­cut­ed or are cur­rent­ly on death row. Among the report’s find­ings are: — In 2011, women con­sti­tut­ed 6.4% of all per­sons sen­tenced to death, the high­est per­cent­age for any year since 1973. — As of the end of…

Jim Petro (pic­tured), for­mer Attorney General of Ohio, strong­ly sup­port­ed the death penal­ty as a state leg­is­la­tor, believed the state would save mon­ey because of the death penal­ty, and that it would act as a deter­rent. But, he recent­ly said, ​“Neither of those things have occurred, so I ask myself, ​‘Why would I vote for it again?’ I don’t think I would. I don’t think the law has done any­thing to ben­e­fit soci­ety and us. It’s cheap­er and, in my…

On January 23, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the state of Ohio chal­leng­ing the uncon­di­tion­al writ of habeas cor­pus and bar to the re-pros­e­cu­tion of Joe D’Ambrosio (pic­tured), thus end­ing the cap­i­tal case. He has now been freed from death row with all charges…

A new study by the orga­ni­za­tion Together Against the Death Penalty exam­ined the sta­tus of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S. through a series of inter­views and vis­its to death penal­ty states in 2010. The report, 999 — The Death Penalty in the United States, was writ­ten by Arnaud Gaillard and it expos­es some of the seri­ous prob­lems with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in this coun­try from a human rights per­spec­tive. The report calls on deci­sion-mak­ers to take a clos­er look at the…