Publications & Testimony

David Baker has writ­ten a thor­ough and insight­ful analy­sis of how the death penal­ty in the U.S. has been used against Native Americans. In​“American Indian Executions in Historical Context,” Baker places the exe­cu­tion of Native Americans with­in the his­to­ry of colo­nial­ism, slav­ery and the con­quer­ing of indige­nous tribes in ear­ly America. The arti­cle traces these devel­op­ments to the cur­rent era, about which the…

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U.S. Supreme Court stayed the Alabama exe­cu­tion sched­uled for night of Jan. 31.Watch the Independent Film Channel​’s piece on the U.S. Supreme Court case regard­ing lethal injec­tion, Baze v. Rees. The video also includes a dis­cus­sion of death penal­ty trends with DPIC’s Richard Dieter and an inter­view with for­mer Texas death row chap­lain Carroll Pickett. 2007: DPIC’s Year End ReportHIGHLIGHTS FROM THE 2007 REPORT Executions for the year: 42 — lowest in…

According to new polling analy­sis from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, sup­port for the death penal­ty among the gen­er­al pub­lic has dropped to 62% (August 2007), down from a high of 80% sup­port in the mid-1990s. Among black respon­dents, 51% opposed the death penal­ty and only 40% were in favor. Hispanics were about even­ly split with 48% in favor of the death penal­ty and 47% opposed. Eighty-two (82%) per­cent of con­ser­v­a­tive Republicans sup­port the death…

Kenneth Richey, a British and an American cit­i­zen, is expect­ed to be freed soon after spend­ing 20 years on Ohio’s death row for the mur­der of his ex-girlfriend’s 2‑year-old daugh­ter in a 1986 apart­ment fire. Richey’s con­vic­tion was over­turned by a fed­er­al court in August 2007 after 15 years of appeals that cast doubts on wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny and the com­pe­ten­cy of his defense attor­ney at the ini­tial tri­al. More recent­ly, the orig­i­nal evi­dence pre­sent­ed by arson experts…

The Death Penalty Information Center has released its 13^th annu­al Year End Report, not­ing that exe­cu­tions have dropped to a 13-year low as a de fac­to mora­to­ri­um took hold in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s exam­i­na­tion of lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures. Death sen­tences have also dropped con­sid­er­ably in recent years. DPIC pro­ject­ed 110 new death sen­tences in 2007 — the low­est num­ber since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976, and a 60% drop since…

Lubbock crim­i­nal attor­ney Jack E. Stoffregen will head West Texas’ first pub­lic defend­er ser­vice devot­ed sole­ly to cap­i­tal cas­es. Centered in Lubbock County, a sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed area that has few local crim­i­­nal-defense attor­neys with cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al expe­ri­ence, the West Texas Regional Public Defender Office will han­dle the cas­es of indi­gent defen­dants who can­not afford an attor­ney. The office, with a bud­get of $2.5 mil­lion fund­ed by Texas, is expected…

Journal of the American Medical Association COMMENTARY By Lee Black, JD, LLM and Robert M. Sade, MD Legal exe­cu­tion by lethal injec­tion has made nation­al head­lines dur­ing the past 2 years because pris­on­ers have argued that it pos­es an unnec­es­sary risk of pain as cur­rent­ly per­formed and there­fore con­sti­tutes uncon­sti­tu­tion­al cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. The most wide­ly used method of lethal injec­tion, devel­oped by a physician,1 involves the intravenous infusion…

In a recent edi­to­r­i­al, The New York Times praised New Jersey’s replace­ment of the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. The Times wrote,​“It took 31 years, but the moral bank­rupt­cy, social imbal­ance, legal imprac­ti­cal­i­ty and ulti­mate futil­i­ty of the death penal­ty has final­ly pen­e­trat­ed the con­sciences of law­mak­ers in one of the 37 states that arro­gates to itself the right to exe­cute human beings.” The Times noted the…

NEWS RELEASEGovernor Jon S. CorzineDecember…