Publications & Testimony

A new book by David Garland, ​“Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition,” offers a fresh per­spec­tive on why the death penal­ty endures in the United States when so many oth­er coun­tries in the Western world have already abol­ished it. The book seeks to under­stand the per­sis­tence of the death penal­ty in the U.S. as a social fact, using soci­o­log­i­cal, his­tor­i­cal and legal analy­ses to explain the unique and pecu­liar man­ner in which the…

On September 17, Governor Robert McDonnell announced that he would not grant clemen­cy to Teresa Lewis, who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Virginia on September 23. Requests for a com­mu­ta­tion of her death sen­tence had come from thou­sands of indi­vid­u­als, from men­tal health groups, the European Union and nov­el­ist John Grisham. Many had point­ed to the fact that two co-defen­dants in the mur­ders that sent Lewis to death row had received life…

According to the lat­est FBI Uniform Crime Report released on September 13, the nation­al mur­der rate has dropped from 5.4 (per 100,000 of pop­u­la­tion) in 2008 to 5.0 in 2009, an 8.1% decrease. Each region of the coun­try expe­ri­enced a decrease in its mur­der rate, with the Northeast expe­ri­enc­ing the most sig­nif­i­cant drop of 9%, from 4.2 to 3.8. As in the past, the Northeast con­tin­ued to have the low­est mur­der rate in the coun­try, while the South con­tin­ued to have the highest…

On September 10, Franklin County Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd ruled that Kentucky​’s new exe­cu­tion pro­to­col is incon­sis­tent with state law and does not pro­vide safe­guards to pre­vent an inmate who is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled or crim­i­nal­ly insane from being exe­cut­ed. As a result, Judge Shepherd stayed the September 16 exe­cu­tion of Gregory Wilson, stat­ing, ​“Because the state’s pro­to­col does­n’t include a mech­a­nism to deter­mine if some­one is men­tal­ly retard­ed and…

Acclaimed author John Grisham recent­ly pub­lished an op-ed in the Washington Post ques­tion­ing why Teresa Lewis is fac­ing the death penal­ty when both her co-defen­dants, two men who actu­al­ly com­mit­ted the killings, were giv­en life-with­out-parole sen­tences. According to Grisham, the judge who sen­tenced Lewis to death mis­tak­en­ly believed that she was the ​“mas­ter­mind” behind the killings. However, it has now been revealed that her IQ of 72…

As many schools are now begin­ning their new terms, the Death Penalty Information Center is proud to remind you of our two edu­ca­tion­al cur­ric­u­la on the death penal­ty. Our award-win­ning high school pro­gram, Educational Curriculum on the Death Penalty, includes 10-day les­son plans, inter­ac­tive maps and exer­cis­es, and a pre­sen­ta­tion of pros and cons on the death penal­ty for dis­cus­sion and debate. Our col­lege-lev­el cur­ricu­lum, Capital Punishment in…

The U.S. Supreme Court has set oral-argu­ment dates in three death penal­ty-relat­ed cas­es for the upcom­ing 2010 – 2011 term. The Court begins its new term on Monday, October 4. On October 6, the Court will hear Connick v. Thompson. This case chal­lenges an award of $14 mil­lion to John Thompson, who had been sen­tenced to death in New Orleans but was lat­er acquit­ted of all charges. Lower courts had found that the dis­trict attor­ney’s office failed to train…