Publications & Testimony

A new report,​“Double Tragedies,” address­es the ques­tion of whether peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness should face the death penal­ty. The report was authored by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights (MVFHR) and called for treat­ment and pre­ven­tion instead of exe­cu­tion for such offend­ers. The report, based on exten­sive inter­views with 21 fam­i­ly mem­bers in 10 dif­fer­ent states, calls the…

Attorneys for Ohio death row inmate Kevin Keith have pre­sent­ed new evi­dence cast­ing doubt on his orig­i­nal con­vic­tion in briefs filed with the Ohio State Supreme Court. The Ohio Innocence Project has also asked for a new tri­al for Keith, sup­port­ing the claim that sup­pressed evi­dence points to anoth­er sus­pect who said he was paid to $15,000 to​“crip­ple” the drug infor­mant who was the vic­tim of the shoot­ings for which Keith was condemned to…

Richard A. Viguerie, who has been called​“one of the cre­ators of the mod­ern con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment” by The Nation mag­a­zine, recent­ly wrote an op-ed in which he dis­cuss­es how his con­ser­v­a­tive ide­ol­o­gy led him to oppose the death penal­ty and calls for a nation­al mora­to­ri­um on the death penalty. ​“The fact is, I don’t under­stand why more con­ser­v­a­tives don’t oppose the death penal­ty,” writes Viguerie. He argues the…

Each year, 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 an index of the articles from…

A man orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death for four mur­ders in Texas has been released on his own recog­ni­zance after new DNA evi­dence was dis­cov­ered. Robert Springsteen and co-defen­­dant Michael Scott were released by State District Judge Mike Lynch after pros­e­cu­tors said they were not pre­pared to go to tri­al as sched­uled, leav­ing Judge Lynch to fol­low through on his promise to the defen­dants that anoth­er delay would mean free­dom for the defen­dants. Lynch said he not only had…

According to a study by the Independent Weekly, North Carolina con­ser­v­a­tive­ly spent at least $36 mil­lion dol­lars by seek­ing the death penal­ty instead of life in prison with­out parole over the past 7 years, just on defense costs. The state’s Indigent Defense Services orga­ni­za­tion said the aver­age cost of a death penal­ty defense was $63,700, and the state sought the death penal­ty 733 times between 2001 and 2008. The aver­age cost of the 1,785…

If you would like to lis­ten to a brief but infor­ma­tive dis­cus­sion of key death penal­ty issues, try DPIC’s newest resource–Podcasts. The most recent episode of this edu­ca­tion­al series explores the issue of the Costs of the death penal­ty. You can also choose to lis­ten to pre­vi­ous episodes to learn more about the issues of Arbitrariness and Clemency. Podcasts may be down­loaded for lis­ten­ing lat­er on a digital…

Washington’s for­mer med­ical direc­tor for the Department of Corrections, Dr. Marc Stern, recent­ly resigned from his post because of an ethichal con­flict with his role in super­vis­ing those who car­ried out exe­cu­tions. For exam­ple, the pris­on’s med­ical direc­tor, a nurse, attend­ed at least 8 prac­tice ses­sions with the four-mem­ber lethal-injec­­tion team, includ­ing some held on the kitchen coun­ter­top at a team mem­ber’s home. As he left his…

A new book, Lethal Rejection: Stories on Crime and Punishment, edit­ed and writ­ten in part by American University crim­i­nol­o­gist Robert Johnson and stu­dent Sonia Tabriz, fea­tures an array of fic­tion and poet­ry on crime and pun­ish­ment writ­ten by pris­on­ers, aca­d­e­mics, and stu­dents of crim­i­nol­o­gy. The book includes a num­ber of sto­ries about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Jocelyn Pollock, Professor of Criminal Justice at Texas State University, writes in the…

A prosecutor’s mis­con­duct relat­ed to a Kentucky cap­i­tal mur­der case led the state to accept a plea bar­gain with the defen­dant in which he now faces a sen­tence of 10 years with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of imme­di­ate parole. Officials say Assistant Commonweath Attorney Ruth Lerner com­pro­mised the death penal­ty pros­e­cu­tion against Cory Gibson by cut­ting a deal with a wit­ness against Gibson. Lerner had not dis­closed a deal made with the wit­ness in a separate…