Publications & Testimony

The Death Penalty Information Center col­lects rel­e­vant death penal­ty arti­cles that have appeared in print and on media Web sites. Our annu­al com­pi­la­tion is a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of the exten­sive media cov­er­age giv­en to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for a par­tic­u­lar year and is not inclu­sive of all such arti­cles. For those inter­est­ed in exam­in­ing the titles and sources for this cov­er­age, we have pre­pared an index of the arti­cles from 2009 in Excel…

Over 1,000 human rights activists from over 100 coun­tries gath­ered in Geneva, Switzerland, for the 4^th World Congress Against the Death Penalty. Many par­tic­i­pants hope to achieve a mora­to­ri­um on the impo­si­tion and exe­cu­tion of the death penal­ty around the world. At present, 56 states and ter­ri­to­ries still have the death penal­ty, includ­ing China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and the United States. In 2007, the UN General Assembly adopted…

On February 24, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals over­turned the death sen­tence of Charles Dean Hood because the jury was improp­er­ly instruct­ed about poten­tial­ly mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence at his tri­al. Hood’s case more recent­ly made nation­al news when a pri­or extra­mar­i­tal affair between the tri­al judge and the pros­e­cu­tor was revealed. In 2008, even after the judge and the pros­e­cu­tor admit­ted to their inti­mate rela­tion­ship, the Court…

John Whitehead, pres­i­dent of the con­ser­v­a­tive Rutherford Institute, recent­ly voiced con­cerns in the Huffington Post about expand­ing the death penal­ty in Virginia. He not­ed,​“As cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment stud­ies have shown, whether or not you are sen­tenced to death often has lit­tle to do with the crime com­mit­ted and every­thing to do with your race, where you live, and who pros­e­cutes your case.” Whitehead cited…

On February 22, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear, and then sum­mar­i­ly reversed, a fed­er­al appeals court deci­sion that would have giv­en a Texas defen­dant a new tri­al based on improp­er jury selec­tion. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had ruled that Anthony Haynes should be retried or released because a prospec­tive juror was improp­er­ly exclud­ed based on the juror’s race. Two dif­fer­ent judges had presided over the jury…

A bill that would have end­ed the death penal­ty in Kansas lost by a tie vote of 20 – 20 in the state Senate on February 19. The bill would have replaced the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out parole. Republican Senator Carolyn McGinn, the orig­i­nal spon­sor of the leg­is­la­tion, argued for repeal, point­ing to the high cost of the death penal­ty:​“It costs half a mil­lion dol­lars, or 70 per­cent more, to try a death…

Amicus, an orga­ni­za­tion based in the United Kingdom that assists in the legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of those await­ing cap­i­tal tri­als in the United States, will be host­ing a mock tri­al at the Emmanuel Centre (pic­tured) in Westminster, London on Tuesday, March 2, begin­ning at 6:30 PM. The ques­tion is whether the death penal­ty in the U.S. per­verts the course of jus­tice. The tri­al will be presided over by Lord Woolf, Geoffrey Robertson, QC, and Sir…

In an his­toric deci­sion, a pan­el of judges out­side of the state’s court sys­tem unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to exon­er­ate and release Gregory Taylor, a North Carolina man who was impris­oned for near­ly 17 years for first-degree mur­der. In April 1993, Taylor was con­vict­ed of the 1991 mur­der of Jacquetta Thomas, a pros­ti­tute found dead at the end of a cul-de-sac in Raleigh. Police arrest­ed Taylor after find­ing his SUV about 100 yards from the crime scene, even though…

Messages of Life from Death Row fea­tures cor­re­spon­dence from Texas death row inmate Roger McGowen to soci­ol­o­gist and writer Pierre Pradervand. McGowen’s let­ters describe his life on death row and point to flaws in the American crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, espe­cial­ly the arbi­trary nature of the death penal­ty. The pub­lish­er, BookSurge, said the book offers a​“unique jux­ta­po­si­tion of care­ful­ly select­ed texts next…

Mike Hendricks, colum­nist for the Kansas City Star, recent­ly described how the state goes through the motions of hav­ing a death penal­ty, but with no imme­di­ate prospect of its use after 16 years. Kansas rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1994; eight years ago, the Lansing Correctional Facility held an open house for the media, show­cas­ing its new death cham­ber. The room was then sealed and has remained untouched. Ten pris­on­ers await exe­cu­tion, one of whom has been…