Publications & Testimony

Editorial de…

DPIC’s Lethal Injection Page The Death Penalty in 2006:Year End Report The Death Penalty Information Center has released its 12^th annu­al Year End Report. This year’s high­lights include:Executions dropped to their low­est num­ber in 10 years. The 53 exe­cu­tions this year were 12% less than last year and over 45% less than in 1999. The annu­al num­ber of death sen­tences has dropped almost 60%…

Maryland​’s high­est court has ruled that the state’s adop­tion of its lethal injec­tion pro­to­cols is sub­ject to the state’s Administrative Procedures Act, and it halt­ed all exe­cu­tions until the pro­to­cols are prop­er­ly reviewed. This deci­sion may require prison offi­cials to con­duct hear­ings on the lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures in a forum open to the pub­lic for com­ment. The Maryland Court of Appeals rul­ing comes just days after exe­cu­tions in California and…

New polling results released by the University of Kentucky Survey Center reveal that Kentuckians over­whelm­ing­ly choose alter­na­tives over the death penal­ty as the most appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment for those con­vict­ed of aggra­vat­ed mur­der. When asked to select the most appro­pri­ate sen­tenc­ing option from choic­es cur­rent­ly avail­able to Kentucky jurors serv­ing in cap­i­tal mur­der tri­als, 67% select­ed sen­tences oth­er than the death penal­ty. The first choice among…

Commenting on the recent halt­ing of exe­cu­tions over the lethal injec­tion con­tro­ver­sy and DPIC’s Year End Report, the Boston Globe raised the ques­tion of​“whether exe­cu­tion by any method is right.” Their edi­to­r­i­al con­clud­ed that “[t]his hit-and-miss sys­tem offers no pro­tec­tion for soci­ety,” and stat­ed that a life-with­­out parole alter­na­tive would​“pro­tect soci­ety while allow­ing for redress if a pris­on­er could show he was wrong­ly con­vict­ed. A ban on…

The rul­ing from U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel (pic­tured) on Friday, December 15, appears intend­ed to spur California pub­lic offi­cials to mod­i­fy the cur­rent sys­tem of putting inmates to death. Judge Fogel’s order was not a final deci­sion, but rather a​“Memorandum of Intended Decision: Request for Response from Defendants.” The defen­dants in this case are the cor­rec­tions offi­cials of the state, includ­ing, ulti­mate­ly, the gov­er­nor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Judge Fogel…

Florida​’s gov­er­nor halt­ed all exe­cu­tions in the state until a com­mis­sion can inves­ti­gate and report what went wrong with the lethal injec­tion of Angel Nieves Diaz on December 13. Gov. Jeb Bush issued an exec­u­tive order announc­ing a pan­el of experts to make rec­om­men­da­tions for changes to the process and said that no death war­rants will be signed until mod­i­fi­ca­tions are adopt­ed. Diaz’s exe­cu­tion took more than twice as long as nor­mal and required two…

DPIC’s 12^th annu­al Year End Report was released on December 14 and reveals a broad decline in the use of the death penal­ty in the U.S. based on a num­ber of fac­tors: the pub­lic now favors life with­out parole over the death penal­ty; the num­ber of exe­cu­tions has dropped to the fewest in a decade, in part because of chal­lenges to the lethal injec­tion process; and the annu­al num­ber of death sen­tences is now at a 30-year low. The report notes that var­i­ous states have put…

Although no jury has returned a death sen­tence in a fed­er­al case in Puerto Rico in mod­ern times, more cas­es are pend­ing, rais­ing con­cerns among many cit­i­zens. Puerto Rico bars the death penal­ty in its con­sti­tu­tion. However, a U.S. Court of Appeals deci­sion in 2001 held that the fed­er­al death penal­ty can be applied there. This deci­sion over­turned a low­er court that ruled the use of the fed­er­al death penal­ty in the Commonwealth would be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The issue…

The Albany Democrat-Herald in Oregon recent­ly edi­to­ri­al­ized that the​“death penal­ty isn’t work­ing,” and con­clud­ed​“that the death penal­ty here is a point­less law. If we’re not going to apply this law, then get­ting rid of it would be the less expen­sive course.” The edi­to­r­i­al cit­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of error, the arbi­trari­ness of apply­ing the pun­ish­ment to some dan­ger­ous offend­ers but not oth­ers, and the dif­fi­cul­ty of ever…