Publications & Testimony

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 to consider the charges…

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 potentially capital cases where the state instead…

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 music player. More issues will be covered in the near future. To subscribe to the Podcast…

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 position on the eve of a scheduled execution, Stern formally…

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 robbery case in exchange for his testimony against…

In a 5 – 4 ruling on June 18, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a lower federal court ruling holding that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees a convicted inmate the right to a DNA test on evidence that might prove his innocence. The defendant, William Osborne, had been convicted in 1994 of sexual assault in Alaska and sentenced to 26 years in prison. Alaska is one of only 4 states in the country that does not have a law providing for access to DNA evidence (the other 3 are…

Indiana is sentencing fewer people to death and executing at its slowest pace in 15 years. It has gone two years without an execution for the first time since the mid-1990’s. “We’re running out of death row inmates,” said Clark County Prosecutor Steven Stewart, who maintains a pro-death penalty Web site. Prosecutors attribute the decline to time and money issues, part of a national trend that has prompted several states to move towards abolishing the death penalty. Vanderburgh County Prosecutor…

Eighty-eight percent of the country’s top criminologists do not believe the death penalty acts as a deterrent to homicide, according to a new study published on June 16 in the Northwestern University School of Law’s Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. The study was authored by Professor Michael Radelet, Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and graduate student Traci Lacock. Their article, “Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates? The Views of Leading…