Publications & Testimony

Dr. Deepak Chopra recent­ly wrote that con­tin­u­ing use of the death penal­ty in the U.S. is irra­tional because it does not deter crime, risks inno­cent lives, and iso­lates the U.S. among the major­i­ty of First World nations that have cho­sen to aban­don cap­i­tal punishment:The U.S. has iso­lat­ed itself among First World coun­tries by allow­ing the death penal­ty — 123 coun­tries have abol­ished it com­plete­ly, or in prac­tice nev­er use it, a few per­mit­ting it under extreme circumstances.Of the 50 countries…

In a 5 – 4 deci­sion that revealed a deep divi­sion among the Justices over the fair­ness of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Kansas’s death penal­ty statute on June 26. In Kansas v. Marsh, the Court held that juries may be required to sen­tence a defen­dant to die when there is an equal weight of mit­i­gat­ing and aggra­vat­ing evi­dence. The rul­ing over­turns a Kansas Supreme Court deci­sion that found the prac­tice uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because it vio­lat­ed the Eighth Amendment’s protection…

The Death Penalty Information Center held its 10^th Annual Thurgood Marshall Journalism Awards at the National Press Club on Monday, June 26. This year’s award recip­i­ents were Jacqui Lofaro and Victor Teich of Justice Productions for their doc­u­men­tary ​“The Empty Chair,” and reporter Robert Nelson of the Phoenix New Times for his cov­er­age of death row exoneree Ray Krone. Lofaro and Teich received this year’s Award for excel­lence in the tele­vi­sion broadcast category.

Members of the New York Assembly’s Codes Committee recent­ly vot­ed 13 – 5 against a bill to rein­state the death penal­ty, a vote that revealed a grow­ing bi-par­ti­san oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Last year’s vote on the same mea­sure was 11 – 7. New York’s death penal­ty was over­turned in 2004 by the state’s high­est court. A num­ber of Assembly mem­bers have said they no longer sup­port the death penal­ty because of grow­ing evi­dence that it risks inno­cent lives and because the state now has the…

Did this man die…for this man’s…

A Chicago Tribune inves­ti­ga­tion set for release this week­end will reveal ground­break­ing evi­dence that Texas may have exe­cut­ed an inno­cent man in 1989. The defen­dant, Carlos DeLuna, was exe­cut­ed for the fatal stab­bing of Texas con­ve­nience store clerk Wanda Lopez in 1983. New evi­dence uncov­ered by reporters Maurice Possley and Steve Mills casts doubt on DeLuna’s guilt and points towards anoth­er man, Carlos Hernandez, who had a record of sim­i­lar crimes and repeat­ed­ly confessed to…

In the wake of numer­ous law­suits chal­leng­ing cur­rent lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures and a recent U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing that makes it eas­i­er for those on death row to file such claims, med­ical experts have iden­ti­fied alter­na­tive pro­to­cols that would be less risky to the pris­on­er but more dif­fi­cult for wit­ness­es to observe. ​“There’s an innu­mer­ably long list of med­ica­tions that can be giv­en to cause some­one to die,” said Dr. Mark Dershwitz, a pro­fes­sor of anes­the­si­ol­o­gy at the University of…

The New York…

According to the FBI’s Preliminary Uniform Crime Report for 2005, all regions of the coun­try expe­ri­enced a rise in mur­der rates in 2005. The Midwest had the largest increase (5.8%) and the West had the small­est increase (3.2%). Based on the increas­es report­ed by the FBI and the pre­vi­ous year’s mur­der rates, the South again had the high­est mur­der rate in the coun­try– 6.9 mur­ders per 100,000 peo­ple – fol­lowed by the West (5.9), Midwest (5.0) and the Northeast (4.4). The rates for…

The League of Women Voters of the United States has adopt­ed an offi­cial nation­al pol­i­cy call­ing for abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty. During the orga­ni­za­tion’s 47^th bien­ni­al nation­al con­ven­tion in Minneapolis, del­e­gates adopt­ed pol­i­cy lan­guage stat­ing, ​“The League of Women Voters of the United States sup­ports the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty.” The League of Women Voters has more than 130,000 mem­bers and sup­port­ers. It is a non-par­ti­san polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion that encour­ages the informed and…