Publications & Testimony

Oregon Supreme Court Justice Martha Walters recent­ly sug­gest­ed that it is time to review the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty. Concurring in Oregon v. Michael Davis, Justice Walters wrote,​“When pre­sent­ed with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so, I urge this court to con­sid­er our state’s expe­ri­ence in impos­ing the death penal­ty and to exam­ine its con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty anew.“ Justice Walters acknowl­edged that the death penalty…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Washington Post cit­ed trends and sta­tis­tics from DPIC’s 2008 Year End Report in call­ing for an end to the death penal­ty in Maryland. The paper urged Maryland law­mak­ers to​“heed the march of his­to­ry” and not­ed that use of the death penal­ty is declin­ing around the coun­try:​“According to the Death Penalty Information Center, a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that stud­ies cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, exe­cu­tions nationwide reached…

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The num­ber of police offi­cers killed by gun­fire in 2008 dropped by 40% from 2007, down to its low­est lev­el in more than 50 years, accord­ing to a report by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. The report attrib­uted the decline to a new empha­sis on offi­cer safe­ty train­ing and equip­ment. In addi­tion to increased train­ing, more offi­cers are wear­ing body armor and using stun guns to pro­tect them­selves. The over­all number of…

The Death Penalty Information Center’s Year End Report for 2008 record­ed 37 exe­cu­tions for the year that ends today. That is a 12% drop from the 42 exe­cu­tions in 2007. However, based on exe­cu­tions already sched­uled for 2009, the com­ing year may see an increase. There are 23 exe­cu­tions sched­uled for the first five months of 2009, and more dates are like­ly to be added. As was true in 2008, almost all the exe­cu­tions sched­uled are in the south and about half (12…

Daryl Atkins’s con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge result­ed in the U.S. Supreme Court exempt­ing peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties from the death penal­ty. Despite this ground­break­ing rul­ing, Virginia courts were unwill­ing to rec­og­nize his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Below is a time­line of events in Atkins. The time­line uses the term used for intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty at the time of the events,…

At least 40 death row inmates, some on the day of their exe­cu­tion, were grant­ed stays last­ing beyond their sched­uled dates in 2006-08 based in whole or in part on chal­lenges to the lethal injec­tion process. Some stays were lift­ed and the inmates even­tu­al­ly exe­cut­ed. In many states, all exe­cu­tions were effec­tive­ly on hold until the lethal injec­tion con­tro­ver­sy is resolved. At the same time, oth­er exe­cu­tions were allowed to go forward…

Below are exam­ples of state media cov­er­age of Baze v. Rees regard­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of lethal injec­tion. In many instances, the arti­cles dis­cuss the pos­si­ble impact of the decision on…

The Dallas Morning News renewed its call for a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in Texas because of the numer­ous errors in the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem. The paper high­light­ed the cas­es of Michael Blair and Charles Hood as exam­ples of how the sys­tem has bro­ken down. Blair was exon­er­at­ed in 2008 after 14 years on death row. DNA evi­dence revealed that he had not been the mur­der­er of 7‑year-old Ashley Estel in 1993,…

The top med­ical offi­cer for the Department of Corrections in the state of Washington has resigned in order to avoid any par­tic­i­pa­tion in the state’s exe­cu­tion process. As the doc­tor respon­si­ble for prepar­ing oth­ers to car­ry out lethal injec­tions, Dr. Marc Stern con­clud­ed that his eth­i­cal oblig­a­tions as a physi­cian required that he recuse him­self from such actions and that resign­ing was the only way to ful­ly remove him­self from this…