Publications & Testimony

March 26, 2006Does Killing Really Give Closure?By Dahlia LithwickThe past few weeks have been rife with the prospect of clo­sure denied.The fam­i­lies of Slobodan Milosevic’s tens of thou­sands of vic­tims were osten­si­bly denied clo­sure when he died before the con­clu­sion of his war crimes tri­bunal. The deci­sion over where to try exiled Liberian ruler Charles Taylor turns large­ly on how to afford clo­sure to his vic­tims. And the fam­i­lies of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks despaired that…

Most New Yorkers would choose a sen­tence of life with­out parole (LWOP) over the death penal­ty for those con­vict­ed of mur­der. In a recent poll pub­lished in Newsday, 53% of N.Y. adults said LWOP is the bet­ter penal­ty, where­as only 38% chose the death penal­ty, with 9% uncer­tain. New York’s death penal­ty was found uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by the state’s high­est court in 2004. The leg­is­la­ture elect­ed not to modify the…

After mem­bers of the Wisconsin Senate passed a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for a ref­er­en­dum on rein­stat­ing the death penalt, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel edi­to­r­i­al crit­i­cized the vote and urged mem­bers of the state Assembly to reject the pro­pos­al. ThoughWisconsin has not had the death penal­ty since 1853, the state leg­is­la­ture has con­sid­ered a rein­state­ment mea­sure dur­ing each of the past 20 years. The Sentinel voiced con­cerns about inno­cence, race, deter­rence, and a vari­ety of oth­er issues in its…

South Dakota has sched­uled the exe­cu­tion of 24-year-old Elijah Page on August 28 for a mur­der com­mit­ted in 2000. Page has dropped his remain­ing appeals. He would be the first per­son exe­cut­ed in the state since it rein­stat­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1979. The last exe­cu­tion in the state was in 1947. South Dakota has only four peo­ple on its death row. Among church lead­ers in South Dakota, there is a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion with regard to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Catholic, Methodist, and…

After spend­ing 18 years in prison for a crime he did not com­mit, Arthur Mumphrey received a full par­don from Texas Governor Rick Perry. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles had unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ed that Perry par­don Mumphrey based on DNA test results that showed he was not respon­si­ble for assault­ing a 13-year-old girl in 1986, a crime for which Mumphrey was sen­tenced to serve 35 years in prison. ​“My action today can­not give back the time he spent in prison, but it does end this…

New Jersey Attorney General Zulima Farber (pic­tured) recent­ly voiced her sup­port for extend­ing the state’s mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, not­ing that she does not believe the death penal­ty is a ​“nec­es­sary tool” for pros­e­cu­tors and believes cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment does not deter crime. ​“I don’t think it’s a deter­rent. And I under­stand revenge. I think some peo­ple deserve it. But I don’t think it’s a nec­es­sary tool.… I don’t have a philo­soph­i­cal or reli­gious oppo­si­tion to the death penalty,…

Each year, DPIC col­lects rel­e­vant death penal­ty arti­cles that have appeared in print and on media Web sites. Our col­lec­tion cer­tain­ly does not con­tain all such arti­cles, nor do we claim that it rep­re­sents the ​“best” arti­cles. It is only a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of the exten­sive cov­er­age giv­en to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in print in a par­tic­u­lar year. For those inter­est­ed in exam­in­ing this cov­er­age, we have pre­pared an index of the arti­cles from 2005 in PDF for­mat. Note that we are not posting the…

A jury in Georgia elect­ed to sen­tence James Sullivan to life with­out parole after find­ing him guilty of hir­ing a hit­man to kill his wife in 1987. ​“We thought that life impris­on­ment with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole was enough. We did­n’t want to be the judge about some­body else’s life. We want­ed God to be the judge,” said juror Debra Klayman after the sen­tence was hand­ed down. The jury had the option of the death penal­ty, life with­out parole, or life with parole. Klayman said that the…

The President’s DNA Initiative has released Principles of Forensic DNA for Officers of the Court, a CD-ROM that address­es the use of DNA in judi­cial pro­ceed­ings. This resource is designed for pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, and judges, and pro­vides a sim­ple overview of DNA tech­nolo­gies and the issues that arise when DNA evi­dence is pre­sent­ed in court. The top­ics are cov­ered in short para­graphs accom­pa­nied by illus­tra­tions, and links to oth­er resources are includ­ed. Some of the areas…

A new report issued by Amnesty International exam­ines the issue of men­tal ill­ness and the death penal­ty. The report notes that the U.S. Supreme Court’s deci­sions to halt the exe­cu­tions of juve­nile offend­ers and those with men­tal retar­da­tion left a ques­tion mark over anoth­er cat­e­go­ry of offend­er, the men­tal­ly ill. In the report, Amnesty asks: ​“If the dimin­ished cul­pa­bil­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with youth and men­tal retar­da­tion ren­der the death penal­ty an exces­sive pun­ish­ment when used against offenders…