Publications & Testimony

In a recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Fort Wayne, Indiana, Journal Gazette, the paper wel­comed the pro­pos­al by the state’s Attorney General to recon­sid­er the death penal­ty in light of its enor­mous costs. At a Criminal Justice Summit held at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller asked state offi­cials to look at the death penal­ty from a prac­ti­cal per­spec­tive. He cit­ed a recent cap­i­tal trial in…

A recent review of death penal­ty cas­es in Pennsylvania con­duct­ed by the Philadelphia Inquirer (see ear­li­er DPIC post) has revealed a pat­tern of inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel lead­ing to exten­sive delays and rever­sals of death sen­tences. When the cas­es are lit­i­gat­ed a sec­ond time, now with more com­pe­tent rep­re­sen­ta­tion, they fre­quent­ly do not result in a death sen­tence. Prosecutors have called the sys­tem a great…

Even as death penal­ty cas­es con­tin­ue to absorb tens of mil­lions of tax­pay­er dol­lars, state bud­get cuts are affect­ing courts, pub­lic defenders,and dis­trict attor­ney’s offices across the coun­try, rais­ing con­cerns about delays and inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Reduced bud­gets are impact­ing all aspects of the court sys­tem, includ­ing civ­il and crim­i­nal cas­es, and delay­ing death penal­ty cas­es. Prosecutors are forced to ignore some vio­la­tions, judges are delaying…

The Philadelphia Inquirer recent­ly con­duct­ed a review of death penal­ty appeals in Pennsylvania span­ning three decades and found a pat­tern of inef­fec­tive assis­tance by defense attor­neys. More than 125 cap­i­tal mur­der tri­als in the Pennsylvania, includ­ing 69 in Philadelphia, have been reversed or sent back by state and fed­er­al courts after find­ing that mis­takes by the defense attor­ney deprived the defen­dant of a fair tri­al. These…

On October 27, a group of for­mer Texas judges, pros­e­cu­tors and law enforce­ment offi­cers deliv­ered a let­ter to Governor Rick Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbott and District Attorney Lynn Switzer request­ing DNA tests for death row inmate Hank Skinner. Signatories to the let­ter include: Mark White, for­mer Governor of Texas (pic­tured); Morris L. Overstreet, for­mer Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals; Sam Millsap, former…

A broad range of cit­i­zens in California launched a sig­na­ture cam­paign on October 25 to replace the death penal­ty with life in prison and no parole through a bal­lot ini­tia­tive in November 2012. The sig­na­ture dri­ve was announced at the city hall in San Francisco and was attend­ed by mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and law enforce­ment offi­cials, such as San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey (pic­tured), who sup­port the mea­sure. Hennessey cited…

The Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to announce a great­ly expand­ed ver­sion of its col­lege-lev­­el cur­ricu­lum, Capital Punishment in Context (CPIC). The cur­ricu­lum is free to pro­fes­sors and stu­dents and is avail­able online. The cur­ricu­lum uses a case-study approach, pro­vid­ing detailed fac­tu­al accounts of actu­al death penal­ty cas­es, along with a rich vari­ety of sup­ple­men­tary mate­ri­als. Probing ques­tions for addi­tion­al research are…

A recent CNN per­spec­tive exam­ined the views of those they called​“the most unlike­ly oppo­nents of the death penal­ty, peo­ple who lost loved ones to unspeak­able vio­lence yet believe exe­cut­ing the killer will do noth­ing for fam­i­ly mem­bers or soci­ety.” For exam­ple, Ross Byrd, the son of James Byrd, Jr., who was dragged to his death behind a truck in Texas by Lawrence Brewer, nev­er­the­less object­ed to Brewer’s exe­cu­tion, saying…

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…

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),…