Publications & Testimony

Californians’ sup­port for the death penal­ty is declin­ing accord­ing to results of a new sur­vey con­duct­ed in February 2006 by the Field Poll. The statewide poll revealed that only 63% of respon­dents favor keep­ing the death penal­ty for seri­ous crimes, a fig­ure that is low­er than the 72% sup­port for the death penal­ty mea­sured in 2002 and sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than the 83% who voiced sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in both 1985 and 1986. The sur­vey also found…

In his new book, Death by Design: Capital Punishment as a Social Psychological System, Craig Haney argues that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the events that lead to death sen­tenc­ing itself, are main­tained through a sys­tem that dis­tances and dis­en­gages peo­ple from the true nature of the task. Haney, a pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, relies on his own research and that oth­er of oth­er sci­en­tists in approaching the…

Lawyers and pros­e­cu­tors in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania say that con­cerns about inno­cence and shift­ing pub­lic atti­tudes on the death penal­ty have caused jurors in the coun­ty to​“lose their taste” for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In each of the past 8 cap­i­tal cas­es tried, jurors spared the life of the defen­dant.​“My per­son­al belief is that the heydey of the death penal­ty is over,” said Allegheny County attor­ney Caroline Roberto, for­mer pres­i­dent of the…

Pennsylvania death row inmate George E. Banks, who came with­in a day of being put to death in 2004, has been declared men­tal­ly incom­pe­tent to be executed. ​“His long­stand­ing delu­sions ren­der him unable to ratio­nal­ly com­pre­hend his death sen­tence, its rea­sons or its impli­ca­tions. George Banks is a very men­tal­ly sick man,” stat­ed Luzerne County Judge Michael Conahan in his order. Banks was sen­tenced to death in 1983 for a shoot­ing spree that end­ed in 13 deaths,…

The Florida Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly over­turned the con­vic­tion of death row inmate John Robert Ballard (pic­tured) and ordered his acquit­tal in the 1999 mur­ders of two of his acquain­tances. The Court con­clud­ed that the evi­dence against Ballard was so weak that the tri­al judge should have dis­missed the case imme­di­ate­ly. The pri­ma­ry evi­dence pre­sent­ed against Ballard was a hair and a fin­ger­print, both of which he could have left dur­ing his many vis­its to the victims’…

Several mem­bers of the Arizona House and Senate recent­ly offered apolo­gies to Ray Krone (pic­tured), a for­mer Arizona death row inmate who was freed in 2002 fol­low­ing new DNA tests. The apolo­gies fol­lowed stand­ing ova­tions from mem­bers of the state’s House and Senate when Krone was intro­duced to the leg­is­la­tors in each cham­ber dur­ing floor ses­sions. Krone, who now trav­els the nation edu­cat­ing peo­ple about the prob­lems with the death penal­ty, accepted the…

South Korea’s Ministry of Justice has announced that it is con­sid­er­ing replac­ing the death penal­ty with life with­out parole, a move that the min­istry says stems from con­cerns about human rights.​“We will thor­ough­ly exam­ine the pos­si­bil­i­ty of abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty as part of efforts to set up a human rights-ori­en­t­ed penal sys­tem.… We will review the ade­qua­cy of intro­duc­ing per­ma­nent life impris­on­ment which can­not be remit­ted by parole, as well as…

The num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death each year in California has declined by near­ly 40% since the 1990s. According to the California Department of Corrections, on aver­age, the state sent 35 peo­ple to death row each year dur­ing the 1990s. Since 2000, that num­ber has declined to an aver­age of 21 annu­al­ly. California has the largest death row in the coun­try. California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald M. George attrib­uted some of the decline to more selec­tive charging by…

An exam­i­na­tion of recent Gallup sur­veys in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada found that Americans are more sup­port­ive of the death penal­ty than are either Britons or Canadians. An October 2005 poll of Americans mea­sured sup­port for the death penal­ty at 64%, a fig­ure that was sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than the 44% sup­port mea­sured in Canada and the 49% sup­port found in Great Britain dur­ing December 2005 polls. Support for the death penal­ty recent­ly declined in both…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row USA shows an 8% decline in the coun­try’s death row pop­u­la­tion dur­ing the past 5 years, down from 3,652 in 2000 to 3,373 at the end of 2005. According to the report, California con­tin­ues to have the nation’s largest death row pop­u­la­tion (649), fol­lowed by Texas (409), Florida (388), Pennsylvania (231), and Ohio…