Publications & Testimony

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 three-drug combination in their lethal…

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 tables includes: The number of people on death row declined from 3,245 in 2005 to 3,228…

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 the families of murder victims…

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 reviewing 207 murder cases…

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 author concludes: The trend in American Indian executions during the present…

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 Report HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE 2007 REPORT Executions for the year: 42 — lowest in 13 years % Executions in Texas: 62% %…

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 penalty, but only 41% of liberal…

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 was found to be based on…

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 1999. According to the Bureau of Justice…