Publications & Testimony

The Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to announce the intro­duc­tion of a new Web page on Native Americans and the death penal­ty. The page con­tains infor­ma­tion on the use of the death penal­ty against Native Americans and includes the results of an exten­sive his­tor­i­cal study con­duct­ed by David V. Baker. His research was recent­ly pub­lished in the December 2007 edi­tion of Criminal Justice Studies, and is the first of its kind. Baker report­ed 464 executions of…

Family mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims tes­ti­fied before the Maryland Senate Judiciary Committee on March 6 about the painful toll the death penal­ty has tak­en on their lives, stat­ing that the resources spent on seek­ing death sen­tences could be bet­ter used else­where.​“I’ve watched too many fam­i­lies go through this to make me believe the sys­tem will ever work,” said Kathy Garcia, whose nephew was mur­dered 20 years ago. She continued, ​“The death penalty…

On March 7, 2008, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Richard Taylor. The court’s rul­ing grants Taylor a new tri­al due to a vari­ety of con­sti­tu­tion­al errors at his orig­i­nal tri­al. These errors include the denial of his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to coun­sel at a pre-tri­al com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing, the fail­ure of the tri­al court to hold a com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing dur­ing the tri­al, and the fail­ure of the trial court…

Reverend Joseph B. Ingle’s book, Last Rights: Thirteen Fatal Encounters with the State’s Justice, will be re-released in May with a new intro­duc­tion by Mike Farrell (of MASH) and with its orig­i­nal for­ward by William Styron. Rev. Ingle, who has coun­seled inmates on death row for over 30 years, recounts his close rela­tion­ships with 13 of these inmates before their exe­cu­tions. Devoting a chap­ter to each one, Ingle stress­es the need to see each inmate as an indi­vid­ual. He…

On Monday, April 14, 2008, Seton Hall Law School will be host­ing a con­fer­ence on the recent abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in New Jersey.​“Legislation, Litigation, Reflection, and Repeal: The Legislative Abolition of the Death Penalty in New Jersey” is an all-day event spon­sored by Fordham Law School, The New Jersey State Bar Association, The New York Bar Association Capital Punishment Committee, and Seton Hall Law School. Four pan­els will exam­ine New Jersey’s death penalty from…

Since the fed­er­al death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1988, the state of New York has been more reluc­tant to impose death sen­tences than oth­er states, accord­ing to the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project. New York fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors have asked juries to impose death sen­tences 19 times, but in only one of those cas­es did they vote for the death penal­ty. Nationally, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors win death penal­ties in about 33% of cas­es. In some cases,…

Study Reveals Maryland’s Death Penalty is Costing Taxpayers $186 MillionA study released on March 6, 2008 found that Maryland tax­pay­ers are pay­ing $186 mil­lion dol­lars for a sys­tem that has result­ed in five exe­cu­tions since 1978 when the state reen­act­ed the death penal­ty. That would be equiv­a­lent to $37.2 per exe­cu­tion. The study, pre­pared by the Urban Institute, esti­mates that the aver­age cost to Maryland tax­pay­ers for reach­ing a sin­gle death sentence…

The New Hampshire House of Representatives passed a bill to estab­lish a Commission to Study the Death Penalty. Many offi­cials who have had first-hand expe­ri­ence with New Hampshire’s death penal­ty, includ­ing for­mer Attorneys General Phillip McLaughlin, Peter Heed and Greg Smith, for­mer Superior Court Chief Justice Walter Murphy and for­mer Supreme Court Justice William Batchelder, sup­port the estab­lish­ment of a com­mis­sion to study the state’s death penal­ty pro­ce­dures. If…

The Innocence Commission, a new book by Jon B. Gould, describes how the advent of DNA test­ing and oth­er foren­sic advances in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem have led to seri­ous efforts to under­stand how so many wrong­ful con­vic­tions have hap­pened. In par­tic­u­lar, The Innocence Commission details the first years of the Innocence Commission for Virginia (ICVA), which was the first in the coun­try to con­duct sys­temic research into all wrong­ful con­vic­tions in the state. Gould, the…

Federal District Court Judge Jack B. Weinstein said recent­ly that seek­ing the death penal­ty against Humberto Pepin Taveras in New York is not worth the effort of pros­e­cu­tors or tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.​“Based on the his­to­ry of cas­es tried in met­ro­pol­i­tan New York, the chance of Pepin receiv­ing the death penal­ty is vir­tu­al­ly nil,” Weinstein said. The case against Taveras, who con­fessed to mur­der­ing two drug traf­fick­ers in the 1990s while already serv­ing more than 12 years…