Publications & Testimony

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…

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…

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…

Days after the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the elec­tric chair was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, a Lincoln Journal Star edi­to­r­i­al urged the state to recon­sid­er the death penal­ty: ​“Instead of rush­ing to pass a new means of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the Legislature should take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to final­ly get rid of the death penal­ty.” Nebraska was the only state to retain the elec­tric chair as its sole means of exe­cu­tion. The paper not­ed that it was the right time to take a broad­er look at the death…

In a poten­tial­ly far reach­ing rul­ing, a tri­al judge in New Mexico has barred the state from seek­ing the death penal­ty because the leg­is­la­ture has failed to pro­vide ade­quate fund­ing for defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion. The state’s Attorney General, Gary King, agreed that the cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion can­not go for­ward. After find­ing that fund­ing for the defense was insuf­fi­cient and raised con­sti­tu­tion­al prob­lems, King wrote, ​“The state now con­fess­es the motion to dis­miss filed here­in and can­not in…

Ruling in a pre-tri­al mat­ter in New Mexico, Judge Timothy Garcia of Santa Fe County’s First Judicial District Court held the state’s death penal­ty law to be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al based on a study by the Capital Jury Project. The Project’s research in 14 states had found that jurors often do not fol­low the law in mak­ing their sen­tenc­ing deci­sion. In par­tic­u­lar, the judge found that the jurors’ propen­si­ty toward mak­ing their sen­tenc­ing deci­sion dur­ing the guilt-inno­cence phase of the…

“Legacy of Violence: Lynch Mobs and Executions in Minnesota,” a book by John D. Bessler (University of Minnesota Press, 2003), exam­ines the his­to­ry of ille­gal and state-sanc­tioned exe­cu­tions in Minnesota, one of twelve states that cur­rent­ly does not have the death penal­ty. The book is time­ly in that the cur­rent gov­er­nor, Tim Pawlenty, has pro­posed rein­stat­ing the death penal­ty, which was abol­ished in 1911. The book includes detailed per­son­al accounts from those who were involved in the…