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Publications & Testimony

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May 05, 2011

NEW VOICES: California Distict Attorney Expresses Serious Misgivings about State’s Death Penalty

George Gascon (pic­tured), San Francisco’s District Attorney and a for­mer chief of police, recent­ly dis­cussed his con­cerns about California​’s death penal­ty. He wrote, ​“Despite say­ing that I would­n’t rule out the death penal­ty as dis­trict attor­ney, I want to make clear that I have seri­ous mis­giv­ings con­cern­ing the poten­tial for wrong­ful con­vic­tions and the dis­pro­por­tion­ate impact of the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty on racial minori­ties. Moreover, victims’…

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May 04, 2011

PUBLIC OPINION: Californians Strongly Support Commuting All Death Sentences to Save Money

A recent poll con­duct­ed by David Binder Research found strong sup­port for com­mut­ing all of the sen­tences of California​’s 712 death row inmates to life in prison with­out parole and requr­ing them to pay resti­tu­tion to the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. Of the 800 vot­ers sur­veyed, 63% sup­port­ed the com­mu­ta­tions, which would save the state $1 bil­lion over five years. California cur­rent­ly faces a $13 bil­lion bud­get gap. Voters from across the polit­i­cal spec­trum favored the idea of commuting…

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May 03, 2011

The New Yorker Looks at the Decline in Texas Death Sentences

In the May 9 issue of The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin exam­ines the drop in death sen­tences in Texas and focus­es par­tic­u­lar­ly on the mit­i­ga­tion work being done by the Gulf Region Advocacy Center (GRACE) in Houston, head­ed by Danalynn Recer. Toobin cites a num­ber of pos­si­ble rea­sons for the drop in death sen­tences in Texas, includ­ing ​“the increas­ing use of mit­i­ga­tion, a strat­e­gy that aims to tell the defendant’s life sto­ry.” The arti­cle pro­vides a…

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May 02, 2011

EDITORIALS: Birmingham News Calls for Moratorium on Alabama’s Death Penalty

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Birmingham News called on Alabama law­mak­ers to pass leg­is­la­tion that would require a three-year mora­to­ri­um on impos­ing death sen­tences and car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions, giv­ing the state time to address flaws in the death penal­ty sys­tem. The edi­to­r­i­al out­lined five rea­sons why leg­is­la­tors with var­i­ous posi­tions should be unit­ed in such an effort. The paper…

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Apr 29, 2011

Growing Death Penalty Caseload for One Nevada County Causing Cost Concerns

Clark County, Nevada, has more pend­ing death penal­ty cas­es per capi­ta than any oth­er urban coun­ty in the coun­try. According to a review by Nevada Attorneys for Criminal Justice (NACJ), Clark County (Las Vegas) cur­rent­ly has 80 tri­als in which pros­e­cu­tors are seek­ing the death penal­ty. By com­par­i­son, Maricopa County in Arizona has the most pend­ing death cas­es (130), but it has twice the pop­u­la­tion of Clark County. Los Angeles County,…

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Apr 28, 2011

NEW RESOURCES: Most Recent DEATH ROW USA Report Now Available

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund​’s ​“Death Row USA” shows that the num­ber of peo­ple on the death row in the United States is con­tin­u­ing to slow­ly decline, falling to 3,260 as of April 1, 2010. In 2000, there were 3,682 inmates on death row. Nationally, the racial com­po­si­tion of those on death row is 44% white, 41% black, and 12% Latino/​Latina. California con­tin­ues to have the largest death row pop­u­la­tion (702), fol­lowed by…

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Apr 27, 2011

U.S. Court of Appeals Again Reverses Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Death Sentence

On April 26, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit over­turned the death sen­tence of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Pennsylvania inmate who was con­vict­ed of killing a Philadelphia police offi­cer 30 years ago in 1981. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court vacat­ed a pre­vi­ous grant of sen­tenc­ing relief hand­ed down by the same court in order to allow con­sid­er­a­tion of a recent­ly decid­ed Supreme Court case with relat­ed facts (Smith v. Spisak). Both…

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Apr 26, 2011

NEW RESOURCES: DPIC State Information Pages

DPIC is pleased to announce the launch of its lat­est resource, State Information Pages, pro­vid­ing his­tor­i­cal and cur­rent infor­ma­tion on the death penal­ty for each state. This resource is a work-in-progress, but we are hap­py to present the first 15 state pages. Our orig­i­nal state-by-state data­base is still the best place to look for fre­quent­ly-updat­ed infor­ma­tion such as exe­cu­tion totals and mur­der rates. The new pages are designed as a source of information…

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Apr 25, 2011

NEW VOICES: Law Enforcement Officials Say Death Penalty Does Not Make Them Safer

A recent arti­cle by Terrence P. Dwyer (pic­tured), retired New York State Police Investigator, and George F. Kain, a police com­mis­sion­er in Ridgefield, Connecticut, dis­missed the notion that the death penal­ty is need­ed to pro­tect law enforce­ment offi­cers. Dwyer and Kain wrote that a major­i­ty of police chiefs believe that the death penal­ty does not deter vio­lent crime and rank the death penal­ty last in a list of effec­tive tools for fight­ing crime. ​“In states…

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Apr 22, 2011

STUDIES: New Report Cites Multiple Problems with North Carolina’s Death Penalty

According to a com­pre­hen­sive review of stud­ies on the death penal­ty by Matthew Robinson, Professor of Government and Justice Studies at Appalachian State University, the death penal­ty in North Carolina is expen­sive, racial­ly biased and inef­fec­tive. Prof. Robinson ana­lyzed data from more than 20 death penal­ty stud­ies and found them to be remark­ably con­sis­tent in their con­clu­sions. He said, ​“In the past six years, three states have abol­ished the death penalty:…

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