Publications & Testimony

DPIC’s Lethal Injection Page ​“Volunteers” and the Need for Court Review A sen­tenc­ing that​“shocks the con­science” A recent deci­sion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit under­scored the respon­si­bil­i­ty that all courts, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the fed­er­al courts, have in ensur­ing that constitutional…

The New School in New York City is spon­sor­ing a research conference entitled ​“Punishment: The U.S. Record” to be held November 30 and December 1, 2006. The con­fer­ence will cov­er all aspects of impris­on­ment and pun­ish­ment in the U.S., but some speak­ers will focus on the death penal­ty. In par­tic­u­lar, John Donohue III will exam­ine recent deter­rence stud­ies and David Garland will dis­cuss the func­tion that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment serves in soci­ety. Other…

A fed­er­al District Court judge ruled that Missouri​’s pro­posed changes to its lethal injec­tion process still do not meet the con­sti­tu­tion­al requirments under the Eighth Amendment. Judge Fernando Gaitan ruled on September 12 that Missouri may use a doc­tor in good stand­ing to pre­side over exe­cu­tions rather than requir­ing a board-cer­ti­­fied anes­the­si­ol­o­gist, as he first ordered in the case of Michael Taylor. However, oth­er aspects of Missouri’s new pro­to­col still do…

Back From The Dead: One woman’s search for the men who walked off America’s death row is the sto­ry of 589 for­mer death row inmates who, through a lot­tery of fate, were giv­en a sec­ond chance at life in 1972 when the death penal­ty was abol­ished. Joan Cheever, a for­mer edi­tor of the National Law Journal, who also rep­re­sent­ed a death row inmate in Texas, trav­eled the coun­try inter­view­ing inmates who had been con­demned to death but whose sen­tences were reduced to…

The Justice Minister of Rwanda, Tharcisse Karugarama, announced that the coun­try will like­ly pass a law by December 2006 end­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. This move would allow Rwanda to try sus­pects charged with atroc­i­ties in the 1994 war who are cur­rent­ly in coun­tries that refuse to extra­dite pris­on­ers if they face the death penal­ty. Karugarama said that abo­li­tion was nec­es­sary in order to achieve a sense of clo­sure. Unless the coun­try abol­ish­es the death penalty,…

According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics Report released on September 10, vio­lent crime in the United States decreased slight­ly in 2005, con­tin­u­ing a decade-long trend in few­er vic­tim­iza­tions. Comparing two-year peri­ods, vio­lent crime was low­est in the Northeast region of the coun­try in 2004-05, and that region also expe­ri­enced the largest decrease in vio­lent crime from 2002-03 to 2004-05. Since 1993, vio­lent crime has decreased by about 58% in the U.S. The BJS survey of…

Two of Texas’s main news­pa­pers have called for an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into the case of Ruben Cantu, who was exe­cut­ed in Texas in 1993. New evi­dence revealed in the Houston Chronicle ear­li­er in the year has thrown con­sid­er­able doubt on the guilt of Cantu. Susan Reed, the District Attorney of Bexar County where Cantu was tried, has refused to step down as head of the coun­ty’s inves­ti­ga­tion, even though, as a judge, she signed Cantu’s death war­rant, an apparent…

According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics study released September 6, more than half of all prison and jail inmates, includ­ing 56% of state pris­on­ers, 45% of fed­er­al pris­on­ers, and 64% of local jail inmates have men­tal health prob­lems. The study was based on report­ing of symp­toms by inmates rather than through med­ical diag­no­sis. Among state pris­on­ers with men­tal prob­lems, 43% had symp­toms of mania, 23% had major depres­sion, and 15% had psychotic disorders.

The death penal­ty is rarely sought in the city of Baltimore, but in adjoin­ing Baltimore County almost every eli­gi­ble case becomes a cap­i­tal case. Presently, there are 7 active death-penal­­ty cas­es in Baltimore County, more than the city of Baltimore has had over­all in the past 2 decades. In addi­tion to the dif­fer­ent philoso­phies of the respec­tive State’s Attorneys, the costs of the death penal­ty are a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor. Prosecutors esti­mate that a death penal­ty case costs…

There have been 41 exe­cu­tions in 2006 as of September 5. This is a pace com­pa­ra­ble to last year’s, when there were 60 exe­cu­tions. Eighty per­cent of the exe­cu­tions have been in the South, keep­ing with a pat­tern since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976. Almost half of all exe­cu­tions (20 of 41) have been in one state, Texas. Only about 20% of those exe­cut­ed had killed a black vic­tim, even though about half of all mur­der vic­tims in the U.S. are…