Publications & Testimony

DPIC is pleased to announce the addition of five more states to one of our latest resources, the State Information Pages. Adding to the original 15 state pages made available earlier, pages for Alaska, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Wisconsin may now be accessed as well. These pages provide historical and current information on the death penalty for each state (regardless of whether it currently has the death penalty), including famous cases, past legislative actions, and important…

Lawyers for Jerry Terrell Jackson, who is currently facing execution in Virginia on August 18, recently petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to spare Jackson’s life, arguing that the jury in his 2003 trial did not receive sufficient evidence of the abuse he suffered as a child because his trial lawyers were inadequate. Jackson’s current lawyers told the Court that this evidence could have convinced some jurors not to impose a death sentence: “This Court has repeatedly held that, before a defendant…

Seeking the death penalty in Indiana is very expensive, even though most cases in which the death penalty is sought do not end in an execution. According to the Indiana Public Defender Council, only 16% percent of death penalty cases in the state filed between 1990 and 2009 (30 out of 188) ended with a death sentence, and even fewer resulted in an execution. In Vanderburgh County, where taxpayers have spent $800,000 in the last two decades defending capital cases, only one of the last five…

On August 4 in Virginia, Norfolk Circuit Court Judge Charles Poston accepted the state’s request to dismiss charges against Derek Tice, one of four men known collectively as the Norfolk Four (pictured; Tice is at the lower left), who were originally convicted of a rape and murder following a suspect series of confessions. All four were sentenced to prison. Appeals by attorneys for the Norfolk Four alleged that Robert Glenn Ford, the police detective in the case, obtained false confessions from…

The Death Penalty Information Center has prepared a summary of a comprehensive cost study of California’s death penalty system recently published by federal Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School Professor Paula M. Mitchell. The original study is entitled Executing the Will of the Voters?: A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature’s Multi-Billion Dollar Death Penalty Debacle, and it was published in a special issue of the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review. Using charts, graphs…

A report released by Amnesty International in July looks at recent developments in the lethal injection controversy in the U.S. and provides an overview of the death penalty since it was reinstated in 1976 in Gregg v. Georgia. Amnesty’s report, entitled “An Embarrassment of Hitches: Reflections on the Death Penalty, 35 Years After Gregg v. Georgia, As States Scramble for Lethal Injection Drugs,” begins with a discussion of a lawsuit filed by attorneys for Arizona death row inmate Donald Beaty…

On July 29, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled that the state’s Forensic Science Commission (FSC) does not have authority to review evidence regarding the possible innocence of Cameron Todd Willingham (pictured), who was executed in 2004. Willingham was convicted of setting the fire that killed his three children, but investigtions by prominent forensic scientists have discredited the evidence of arson presented at trial. Abbott said evidence that was tested or offered into evidence prior…