Publications & Testimony

Ronald Curtis Chambers, who was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death for the 1975 mur­der of Mike McMahan, may be giv­en a fourth tri­al fol­low­ing a rul­ing by the U.S. Supreme Court. Chambers was 20 at the time of his crime, and has been on death row longer than any oth­er inmate in Texas. His sec­ond tri­al came 10 years after his first, fol­low­ing a Texas court rul­ing that Chambers should have been told that infor­ma­tion from a psy­chi­atric con­sul­ta­tion could be…

In The Top Ten Death Penalty Myths, pro­fes­sors Rudolph J. Gerber and John M. Johnson explore ten argu­ments used to sup­port the death penal­ty and pro­vide read­ers with cur­rent research and stud­ies chal­leng­ing these argu­ments. The authors show how​“polit­i­cal and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers have used myth and emo­tion­al appeals to mis­rep­re­sent the facts about cap­i­tal exe­cu­tions.” Each chap­ter begins with a state­ment in sup­port of the death penal­ty based on themes such as…

The United States Supreme Court will hear argu­ments on Monday, January 7, on whether or not the lethal injec­tion process in Kentucky is a vio­la­tion of the Constitution’s 8^th Amendment ban on cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ments. While the case, Baze v. Rees, has prompt­ed a de fac­to mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, it does not con­cern the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty itself. Currently, 35 of the 36 states with the death penal­ty use vari­a­tions of the same…

The Bureau of Justice Statistics typ­i­cal­ly releas­es an annu­al report enti­tled​“Capital Punishment” con­tain­ing tables and infor­ma­tion on the death penal­ty for the pre­vi­ous year. Although BJS, which is part of the Department of Justice, did not pub­lish a sep­a­rate report for 2006, it did release infor­ma­tion in tab­u­lar form that quan­ti­fies death penal­ty prac­tice in the U.S. Information drawn from BJS’s recent…

In a recent front-page arti­cle in the New York Times, Joshua Marquis, the dis­trict attor­ney in Clatsop County, Oregon, and a vice pres­i­dent of the National District Attorneys Association, indi­cat­ed that most pros­e­cu­tors with expe­ri­ence in death penal­ty cas­es are ambiva­lent about it:​“Any sane pros­e­cu­tor who is involved in cap­i­tal lit­i­ga­tion will real­ly be ambiva­lent about it,” said Marquis, who has long sup­port­ed the death penal­ty. According to the Times, he said…

Professor John Donohue of Yale University’s School of Law recent­ly con­duct­ed a study of death sen­tences in Connecticut and found that seek­ing the death penal­ty often cor­re­lat­ed with the race of the vic­tim and the defen­dant, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly with the sever­i­ty of the crimes, as the law requires.​“There was basi­cal­ly no ratio­nal sys­tem to explain who got the death penal­ty,” Donohue said.​“It real­ly is about as ran­dom a process as you can pos­si­bly con­struct.” After…

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…

New…

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…