Publications & Testimony

On June 9, 2007 the Death Penalty Information Center released its new report,​“A Crisis of Confidence: Americans’ Doubts About the Death Penalty.” The report, based on results from DPIC’s nation­al pub­lic opin­ion poll, received exten­sive nation­al media cov­er­age in major papers and elec­tron­ic media. In addi­tion, the report was dis­cussed exten­sive­ly on more than 25 Internet blogs, includ­ing many online crim­i­nal jus­tice groups. Among the news orga­ni­za­tions that featured this…

The July 2007 issue of Scientific American mag­a­zine con­tains both an arti­cle dis­cussing the med­ical impli­ca­tions of lethal injec­tion and an edi­to­r­i­al dis­cussing the humane­ness of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment gen­er­al­ly. The edi­to­r­i­al sug­gests that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment​“can nev­er be any­thing but inhu­mane,” and offers the opin­ion that it is​“wrong” and an​“out­rage.” But it fur­ther states that even those who believe the death penal­ty is accept­able, should agree that…

Thurgood Marshall Journalism Awards — 2007 The Death Penalty Information Center is proud to announce the win­ners of the orga­ni­za­tion’s 11^th Annual Thurgood Marshall Journalism Awards. The awards hon­or jour­nal­ists who have made an excep­tion­al con­tri­bu­tion to cov­er­age of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment issues. This year’s cer­e­mo­ny was held at the National Press…

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 28, 2007, that Scott Panetti, a man with severe men­tal ill­ness on Texas’s death row, deserves a rehear­ing on his claim of men­tal incom­pe­tence. The Court’s 5 – 4 rul­ing over­turned a deci­sion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that had used an over­ly restric­tive def­i­n­i­tion of what con­sti­tutes insan­i­ty. The low­er court had held that mere knowl­edge of one’s crime, with­out a ratio­nal under­stand­ing, was…

The fed­er­al death penal­ty impacts racial minori­ties dif­fer­ent­ly than it does whites accord­ing to a recent report from the American Civil Liberties Union. The report, The Persistent Problem of Racial Disparities in the Federal Death Penalty, notes that defen­dants of col­or make up the major­i­ty of the fed­er­al death row. And the risk of a case being autho­rized for the death penal­ty is 84% high­er in cas­es where the vic­tim is white, regard­less of the race of the defen­dant. The…

On June 25, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review a cap­i­tal case from Louisiana in which an all-white jury sen­tenced a defen­dant to death after the pros­e­cu­tor urged a death sen­tence so that the defen­dant would not​“get away with it” like O.J. Simpson. All five qual­i­fied African-Americans had been struck from the jury pool by the pros­e­cu­tion using peremp­to­ry chal­lenges. The defense has chal­lenged the selec­tion of the jury as a violation of…

The Pew Research Center recent­ly released a poll on a vari­ety of social issues, includ­ing the death penal­ty. The poll found that 64% of the U.S. adults sup­port the impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty for per­sons con­vict­ed of mur­der. This is a decline of 14 per­cent­age points from 1996, when 78% of respon­dents said they sup­port­ed it. The Center report­ed that sup­port for the death penal­ty was high­er among men than women, and was sub­stan­tial­ly high­er among whites (69%)…

Dissenting from a U.S. Court of Appeals deci­sion deny­ing relief to Gary Cone, Judge Merritt sharply crit­i­cized the Tennessee Attorney General for​“fal­si­fi­ca­tion” of the record, and he referred to the state’s judi­cial sys­tem as​“bro­ken” and​“inat­ten­tive.” Cone had been grant­ed relief on two oth­er occa­sions by the same Sixth Circuit, but those deci­sions were reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court. In the present case, Cone claimed that sig­nif­i­cant mit­i­gat­ing evidence had…

In the third edi­tion of what some have called​“the first true text­book on the death penal­ty,” author Robert Bohm, a cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer turned col­lege pro­fes­sor, engages the read­er with a full account of the argu­ments and issues sur­round­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. His book, ​“DeathQuest III: An Introduction to the Theory & Practice of Capital Punishment in the United States,” begins with the his­to­ry of the death penal­ty from colo­nial to mod­ern times, and then…

A recent study con­duct­ed by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has revealed that Texas is almost last among states in spend­ing on men­tal health ser­vices and per­forms poor­ly in oth­er men­tal health areas. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas ranked 47^th in the nation in per-capi­­ta spend­ing on men­tal health ser­vices, and received a grade of​“D” for infor­ma­tion access and a grade of…