Publications & Testimony

Researchers from the University of Texas at Dallas recent­ly pub­lished a study on whether exe­cu­tions deter homi­cides using state pan­el date and employ­ing well-known econo­met­ric pro­ce­dures for pan­el analy­sis. The authors found​“no empir­i­cal sup­port for the argu­ment that the exis­tence or appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty deters prospec­tive offend­ers from com­mit­ting homi­cide.” The study was pub­lished in the jour­nal of Criminology and Public…

Justice Stevens’s opin­ion about the death penal­ty evolved while he was on the Court. Excepts from Supreme…

In the course of its research, DPIC col­lects rel­e­vant death penal­ty arti­cles that have appeared in print and on media Web sites. Our col­lec­tion cer­tain­ly does not con­tain all such arti­cles, nor do we claim that it rep­re­sents the​“best” arti­cles. It is only a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of the exten­sive cov­er­age giv­en to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in print in a par­tic­u­lar year. For those inter­est­ed in exam­in­ing this cov­er­age, we have pre­pared index­es of the articles…

Los Angeles Chief of Police William Bratton recent­ly defend­ed San Francisco Distrist Attorney Kamala Harris for not seek­ing the death penal­ty against a sus­pect in a police killing.​“It’s much cheap­er to sen­tence them to life in prison and throw away the key,” said Bratton, who is endors­ing Harris in seek­ing elec­tion as California’s…

A recent study pub­lished by a Duke University econ­o­mist revealed North Carolina could save $11 mil­lion annu­al­ly if it dropped the death penal­ty. Philip J. Cook, a pro­fes­sor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, cal­cu­lat­ed the extra state costs of the death penal­ty dur­ing fis­cal years 2005 and 2006. He cal­cu­lat­ed over $21 mil­lion worth of expens­es that would have been saved if the death penal­ty had been…

Twenty-sev­en peo­ple were exon­er­at­ed and released from prison this year, includ­ing some who had been on death row, accord­ing to a new report from The Innocence Project, a nation­al lit­i­ga­tion and pub­lic pol­i­cy orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to exon­er­at­ing wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed peo­ple. The 27 exonerees served a com­bined 421 years in prison for crimes they did not com­mit. The exon­er­a­tions occurred through the work of the Innocence Project…

County esti­mates in Texas indi­cate that the death penal­ty sys­tem is much more expen­sive than sen­tenc­ing inmates to life impris­on­ment. Gray County spent near­ly $1 mil­lion seek­ing the death penal­ty against Levi King, even though he plead­ed guilty to mur­der. Moreover, these costs do not include the cost of appeals, which will fur­ther increase the cost of the cap­i­tal case, nor the costs of cas­es in which the death penal­ty is sought but not giv­en. By…

New evi­dence in the Troy Davis case in Georgia has recent­ly emerged, fur­ther impli­cat­ing anoth­er sus­pect in the mur­der of off-duty police offi­cer Mark Allen MacPhail. In 1991, Davis was sen­tenced to death for offi­cer MacPhail’s mur­der. Davis became the pri­ma­ry sus­pect after Sylvester​“Redd” Coles told the police about Davis’s pres­ence at the crime scene. During his 1991 tri­al, nine pros­e­cu­tion eye­wit­ness­es tes­ti­fied against Davis.

A recent New York Times edi­to­r­i­al com­ment­ed on the new one-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col used in Ohio for the first time on December 8, but con­clud­ed that​“the exe­cu­tion only rein­forced that any form of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is legal­ly sus­pect and moral­ly wrong.” The Times agreed with the late Justice Harry Blackmun who called such manip­u­la­tions​“tinker[ing] with the machin­ery of death.” The edi­to­r­i­al also noted…

The Death Penalty Information Center released the ​“The Death Penalty in 2009: Year End Report” on December 18, not­ing that the coun­try is expect­ed to fin­ish 2009 with the fewest death sen­tences since the U.S. Supreme Court rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1976. Eleven states con­sid­ered abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty this year, a sig­nif­i­cant increase in leg­isla­tive activ­i­ty from pre­vi­ous years, as the high costs and lack of measurable benefits…