Publications & Testimony

An upcoming death penalty trial in Ohio will cost three to four times more than the cost of a life-without-parole trial, according to the trial judge, Michael Sage (pictured). The death penalty trial for Hector Alvarenga Retana, scheduled to begin on October 31, is expected to cost Butler County an estimated $250,000, according to the judge, not counting the cost of appeals. He said, “[The cost] is so great we can’t afford to pay for that directly out of our ongoing budget. All the costs…

Recent polls conducted by Gallup and CNN indicate Americans’ support for the death penalty is continuing to decline. According to Gallup’s 2011 poll, the percentage of Americans approving the death penalty as a punishment for murder dropped to its lowest level in 39 years. Only 61% supported capital punishment in theory, down from 64% last year and from 80% support in 1994. This is the lowest level of support since 1972, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Furman v. Georgia voided death…

A new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Raymond Bonner, Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, investigates the shortcomings of the justice system in the case of Edward Lee Elmore, a black man sentenced to death in South Carolina in 1982. Elmore, who was semi-literate with intellectual disabilities, was sent to death row for the murder and sexual assault of a white woman, even though there was little connection between him and the victim. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced…

A forthcoming book by John D. Bessler, “Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders’ Eighth Amendment,” discusses the history of the Eighth Amendment and the country’s founders’ views on capital punishment. While the conventional wisdom is that the founders were avid death penalty supporters, Bessler’s examination shows they had conflicting and ambivalent views on the subject. Bessler analyzes the U.S. Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment case law and argues that the death…

The Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to offer a new page illustrating the geography of the death penalty — Executions by County. This page shows the top 15 counties in the U.S. measured by the number of executions since 1976 that emanated from these counties. As revealed on the map, a small number of counties are responsible for a disproportionate number of executions. (Click on the map at left to enlarge.) The information contrasts with the counties that have had the most murders…

Dr. Allen Ault (pictured), a retired Georgia prison warden, recently appeared on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, discussing the effects of carrying out executions on prison workers. Dr. Ault was one of six retired prison wardens who had urged Georgia corrections officials and Governor Nathan Deal to do what they could to halt the execution of Troy Davis. Davis was executed on September 21, 2011. Dr. Ault discussed the difficult questions prison officials face when participating in an execution. He…

In a recent op-ed in the New York Daily News, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo called the death penalty a “serious moral problem” that is “corrosive” to a democratic citizenry. He said many of the problems of the death penalty — ineffectiveness as a deterrent, unfairness, and the risk of executing the innocent — are inevitable: “These imperfections — as well as the horrible and irreversible injustice they can produce — are inevitable. In this country, a defendant is convicted on proof beyond a…