Publications & Testimony

Frank Thompson, a for­mer state pen­i­ten­tiary war­den, has recent­ly joined efforts to repeal the death penal­ty in Oregon. Thompson, who super­vised the only two exe­cu­tions car­ried out in the state since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed in 1984, described the death penal­ty as a ​“failed pub­lic pol­i­cy,” and said that ​“cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment fails ter­ri­bly in meet­ing any evi­dence-based out­comes.” Thompson, who recent­ly joined the Advisory Council of Oregonians for…

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. Copies of an Alabama court rul­ing in Maples’s case were sent to a vol­un­teer New York law firm han­dling his appeals but were unopened by the mail­room and returned to the state court because…

On January 17, Delaware Governor Jack Markell com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of Robert Gattis (pic­tured) to life with­out parole, cit­ing the defen­dan­t’s trou­bled child­hood. Gattis was sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on January 20. By a 4 – 1 vote, the Delaware Board of Pardons had rec­om­mend­ed spar­ing Gattis’s life, cit­ing evi­dence from Gattis’s child­hood that indi­cat­ed severe phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, and sex­u­al abuse by fam­i­ly mem­bers. In grant­i­ng clemency,…

The Pennsylvania Senate recent­ly passed a res­o­lu­tion that will result in a study of the state’s death penal­ty and look at issues of fair­ness, equal­i­ty and costs of a pun­ish­ment that is rarely car­ried out in the state. The res­o­lu­tion was spon­sored by Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, a Republican, who said, ​“Questions are fre­quent­ly raised regard­ing the costs, deter­rent effect and appro­pri­ate­ness of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. I believe that we need to answer these ques­tions.” Since…

On January 10, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed (8 – 1) the mur­der con­vic­tion of Juan Smith because the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office had with­held crit­i­cal evi­dence that would have been favor­able to Smith at his tri­al. Smith had been con­vict­ed of mur­der in the course of an armed rob­bery based on the sole eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny of Larry Boatner. There was no DNA, fin­ger­prints, or oth­er phys­i­cal evi­dence that linked Smith to the 1995 crime. Appellate…

(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…