Publications & Testimony

On January 11, the Illinois Senate, by a vote of 32 – 25, joined the House in vot­ing to repeal the state’s death penal­ty and re-allo­­cate funds in the Capital Litigation Trust Fund to a fund for mur­der vic­tims’ ser­vices and law enforce­ment. If signed into law, Illinois would become the 16^th state to stop cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and would mark the fewest states with the death penal­ty since 1978. Since 1976, Illinois has car­ried out 12…

On January 7, 2011, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter grant­ed a full and uncon­di­tion­al posthu­mous par­don to Joe Arridy, who had been con­vict­ed and exe­cut­ed as an accom­plice to a mur­der that occurred in 1936. The par­don came 72 years after Arridy’s exe­cu­tion and is the first such par­don in Colorado his­to­ry. A press release from the gov­er­nor’s office stat­ed, “[A]n over­whelm­ing body of evi­dence indi­cates the 23-year-old Arridy was innocent,…

Recent rev­e­la­tions about the source of drugs used in lethal injec­tions in the U.S. reveal the extent to which some states have gone in their pur­suit of the dead­ly chem­i­cals. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation, Arizona obtained its three lethal injec­tion drugs from Dream Pharma, Ltd., a small phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny in west London locat­ed in the back of a dri­ving school. Clive Stafford Smith, direc­tor of Reprieve,…

By a vote of 60 – 54 on January 6, the Illinois House approved SB3539, a bill to repeal the death penal­ty and use the mon­ey saved to assist vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and improve law enforce­ment. The action came eleven years after a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions was put in place by then Governor George Ryan. The repeal bill will now move to the Senate for a vote as ear­ly as next week. In January 2000, Ryan ordered the mora­to­ri­um fol­low­ing rev­e­la­tions that more than…

Although the United States is con­sid­ered a death penal­ty coun­try, exe­cu­tions are rare or non-exis­­tent in most of the nation: the major­i­ty of states—31 out of 50—have either abol­ished the death penal­ty or have not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in at least 10 years. An addi­tion­al 6 states have not had an exe­cu­tion in at least 5 years, for a total of 37 states with no exe­cu­tions in that time. Three additional jurisdictions…

In a recent arti­cle in the Peoria Journal Star, Jennifer Bishop Jenkins and Kathleen Bishop Becker, both of whom had fam­i­ly mem­bers mur­dered, called on Illinois​’s state leg­is­la­ture to end the death penal­ty as a bet­ter way of help­ing vic­tims. Becker and Jenkins wrote,​“When our fam­i­ly mem­bers were mur­dered, issues like crime pre­ven­tion, vic­tims’ rights, and the death penal­ty stopped being mere­ly hypo­thet­i­cal… it’s because we prioritize…

Statement from the FDA Regarding Oversight of Lethal Injection Drugs and Release of Foreign Shipments…

The infor­ma­tion and analy­sis in DPIC’s recent 2010 Year-End Report were report­ed in hun­dreds of media out­lets around the coun­try. Among the papers writ­ing edi­to­ri­als on the trends cit­ed in the report were the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Colorado’s Aurora Sentinel. The Times’ edi­to­r­i­al,​“Still Cruel, Less Usual,” not­ed,​“A…

Following the release of the report from the New Hampshire Commission to Study the Death Penalty, New Hampshire​’s Concord Monitor called for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state. The Commission con­clud­ed a year of pub­lic hear­ings and care­ful study and chose by a 12 – 10 vote to rec­om­mend nei­ther expand­ing nor abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty. However, the Monitor point­ed out that the evi­dence pre­sent­ed to the commission was…

On May 29, 2007, a jury in Charleston, West Virginia, rec­om­mend­ed death sen­tences for George Lecco and Valerie Friend for the mur­der of Carla Collins in order to pro­tect their drug ring. Prosecutors main­tained that Lecco arranged to have Collins killed and that Friend did the shoot­ing in 2005. Formal sen­tenc­ing was sched­uled for August 23. The judge is required to fol­low the jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion. These are the first fed­er­al death sen­tences in West Virginia since the…