Publications & Testimony

As stu­dents return for the start of the school year, DPIC’s award-win­ning Educational Curriculum on the Death Penalty is avail­able for teacher and stu­dent use. This free cur­ricu­lum was designed by the Michigan State Communications Technology Laboratory in con­junc­tion with the Death Penalty Information Center. There are sep­a­rate teacher and stu­dent sites, flex­i­ble les­son plans, teacher overviews, dynam­ic maps, and edu­ca­tion­al objec­tives meet­ing nation­al stan­dards. The…

The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America is a new book by Marie Gottschalk of the University of Pennsylvania ana­lyz­ing the rea­sons behind the tremen­dous growth in the prison pop­u­la­tion in the United States. The book exam­ines issues of race, the inter­sec­tion of pris­ons with wom­en’s issues, and the con­se­quences of wide­spread incar­cer­a­tion on soci­ety and the econ­o­my. The author delves into the recent his­to­ry of the death penal­ty and relates it to…

Ray Krone (pic­tured, cen­ter) was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1992 for the mur­der Kim Ancona in Arizona. Krone’s con­vic­tion was even­tu­al­ly over­turned. He was re-tried and again con­vict­ed in 1996. Finally, in 2002, DNA test­ing exclud­ed Krone from the crime and he was freed. Now anoth­er man has plead­ed guilty to the offense. Kenneth Phillips, Jr. was sen­tenced to a term of 53 years to life in prison for the mur­der and sex­u­al assault on August 18, 2006. DNA evidence linked…

A fed­er­al judge pre­sid­ing over the Aryan Brotherhood mur­der tri­al in Santa Ana, California, has ruled that the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which requires that defen­dants be giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­front and cross exam­ine wit­ness­es tes­ti­fy­ing against them at tri­al, applies to at least part of the fed­er­al death penal­ty sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dure as well. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2004 in Crawford v. Washington that tes­ti­mo­ni­al evi­dence from a per­son against a defendant cannot…

The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty was cre­at­ed in Rome on May 12, 2002, and con­sists of 52 orga­ni­za­tions through­out the world: NGOs, attor­neys’ asso­ci­a­tions, trade unions, local com­mu­ni­ties, and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions (includ­ing many that are active in the U.S.) chal­leng­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The Coalition has cho­sen October 10, 2006 as the day to put par­tic­u­lar focus on prob­lems with the death penal­ty around the…

The British Government plans to seek Parliamentary approval of a par­don for more than 300 sol­diers exe­cut­ed for mil­i­tary offens­es dur­ing World War I. The announce­ment came just after a par­don was revealed for Private Harry Farr, who was exe­cut­ed at age 25 for refus­ing to fight. Defense Secretary Des Browne…

South Dakota has sched­uled the exe­cu­tion of Elijah Page for August 28. If this exe­cu­tion goes for­ward, it will mark the fifth inmate in the past six weeks who waived his appeals and was then exe­cut­ed. This will also be the first exe­cu­tion in South Dakota in 59 years. About 12% of those who have been exe­cut­ed since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976 have vol­un­tar­i­ly waived appeals that would like­ly have delayed their execution.Such exe­cu­tions raise ques­tions about the…

A sym­po­sium enti­tled ​“The Next Generation of Death Penalty Research: Priorities, Strategies, and an Agenda” will be spon­sored by the Capital Punishment Research Initiative of the State University of New York in Albany on October 6 & 7, 2006. Speakers will explore con­tem­po­rary death penal­ty laws and prac­tices, and the role of empir­i­cal research in chang­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment poli­cies. Included in an exten­sive list of impres­sive speak­ers are: David Baldus of the University of Iowa…

The August 2006 edi­tion of the National Geographic Magazine con­tains a chart illus­trat­ing the prob­a­bil­i­ties of dying from par­tic­u­lar caus­es. For exam­ple, the chances of dying from heart dis­ease are 1 in 5. The chances of dying in a motor vehi­cle acci­dent dur­ing one’s life­time are 1 in 84. Far down in the list is the chance of dying by legal exe­cu­tion: 1 in 62,468. The very next item in the list is dying by a stroke of light­ning: 1 in 79,746.In 1972, in his con­cur­ring opin­ion in Furman…

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, togeth­er with the Federalist Society and the Constitution Project, recent­ly spon­sored a pan­el in Washington, D.C., exam­in­ing the appli­ca­tion, moral­i­ty and con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty in the United States. The pan­el was mod­er­at­ed by Virginia Sloan of the Constitution Project and fea­tured Samuel Millsap, Jr., for­mer Texas District Attorney, William…