Publications & Testimony

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…

A new study by Professor Robert J. Smith of the DePaul University College of Law exam­ines the impo­si­tion of death sen­tences by coun­ties in the U.S. The author, who is also part of The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard, found that only a rel­a­tive­ly few coun­ties impose a large per­cent­age of death sen­tences, while a large major­i­ty of juris­dic­tions have aban­doned the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Prof. Smith’s study found that death sentences that…

An upcom­ing death penal­ty tri­al in Ohio will cost three to four times more than the cost of a life-with­out-parole tri­al, accord­ing to the tri­al judge, Michael Sage (pic­tured). The death penal­ty tri­al for Hector Alvarenga Retana, sched­uled to begin on October 31, is expect­ed to cost Butler County an esti­mat­ed $250,000, accord­ing to the judge, not count­ing the cost of appeals. He said, “[The cost] is so great we can’t afford to pay for that direct­ly out of our…

Recent polls con­duct­ed by Gallup and CNN indi­cate Americans’ sup­port for the death penal­ty is con­tin­u­ing to decline. According to Gallup’s 2011 poll, the per­cent­age of Americans approv­ing the death penal­ty as a pun­ish­ment for mur­der dropped to its low­est lev­el in 39 years. Only 61% sup­port­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the­o­ry, down from 64% last year and from 80% sup­port in 1994. This is the low­est lev­el of sup­port since 1972, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in…

A new book by Pulitzer Prize-win­ning jour­nal­ist Raymond Bonner, Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, inves­ti­gates the short­com­ings of the jus­tice sys­tem in the case of Edward Lee Elmore, a black man sen­tenced to death in South Carolina in 1982. Elmore, who was semi-lit­er­ate with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties, was sent to death row for the mur­der and sex­u­al assault of a white woman, even though there was little connection…

A forth­com­ing book by John D. Bessler, ​“Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders’ Eighth Amendment,” dis­cuss­es the his­to­ry of the Eighth Amendment and the coun­try’s founders’ views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. While the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom is that the founders were avid death penal­ty sup­port­ers, Bessler’s exam­i­na­tion shows they had con­flict­ing and ambiva­lent views on the sub­ject. Bessler ana­lyzes the U.S. Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment case law and…