Publications & Testimony

According to a recent news report, Indiana tax­pay­ers spend mil­lions of dol­lars to send dozens of peo­ple to death row, but more than half of those sen­tenced have had their con­vic­tions over­turned or their sen­tences vacat­ed. In addi­tion, the ris­ing costs of the death penal­ty have result­ed in a more arbi­trary appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment due to fund­ing con­straints in cer­tain rur­al coun­ties, a fact that has many state res­i­dents ques­tion­ing the pun­ish­men­t’s…

NEW FROM DPIC NEW DPIC SUMMARY DPIC’s Summary of the Chicago Tribune Series on Forensic Science DEATH ROW U.S.A. The July 1, 2004 Edition of Death Row USA (from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund) is avail­able on DPIC’s site. DETERRENCE and the FBI UNIFORM CRIME REPORT 2003 The South (the region with the most exe­cu­tions) again had the high­est mur­der rate in the coun­try in 2003. The two states with the most executions in…

With bipar­ti­san sup­port, Ohio’s House of Representatives passed a bill to cre­ate an 18-mem­ber com­mit­tee to con­duct an exhaus­tive study of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state. Under the bill, which passed by a vote of 64 – 30 in the Republican-con­trolled House, the com­mit­tee would exam­ine all cap­i­tal tri­als since the state rein­stat­ed the pun­ish­ment in 1981. The com­mit­tee would exam­ine issues such as race, gen­der, and the eco­nom­ic sta­tus of defen­dants and their…

Former Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Blackmar recent­ly reit­er­at­ed his oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty and his con­cerns about wrong­ful con­vic­tions, not­ing that the exon­er­a­tion of Missouri death row inmate Joseph Amrine​“makes me won­der how many peo­ple there are who were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed.” Amrine spent 26 years in prison, 17 of them on death row, before his con­vic­tion was over­turned and he was released in July 2003. ​“The les­son is that…

The lat­est edi­tion of The American Prospect fea­tures a series of arti­cles by promi­nent writ­ers and human rights lead­ers regard­ing the effect of the inter­na­tion­al move­ment for human rights on the U.S. Two of the arti­cles high­light U.S. death penal­ty poli­cies. Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh points out the con­flict between the U.S.‘s efforts to sup­port inter­na­tion­al human rights and our domes­tic prac­tices such as the use of the juve­nile death penal­ty.​“In…

WHO SUPPORTS THE…

Mirroring sta­tis­tics released this year in the Death Penalty Information Center’s Innocence Report, the Justice Department’s Capital Punishment, 2003 revealed that the nation’s death row is con­tin­u­ing to decline and that the amount of time between death sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion has increased. Compiled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the report not­ed that 3,374 inmates were on death row at the con­clu­sion of 2003, 188 few­er than a year…

A mur­der charge against Louis Greco was final­ly dis­missed by Massachusetts author­i­ties 9 years after he died in prison. According to the Associated Press, in 2000, a Justice Department task force uncov­ered secret F.B.I. mem­o­ran­da show­ing that Mr. Greco and three co-defen­­dants, Peter J. Limone, Joseph Salvati, and Edward Tameleo, had been wrong­ly con­vict­ed of a mur­der that occurred in 1965 based on per­jured tes­ti­mo­ny. (Limone had been sen­tenced to death, but was later…

Based at the State University of New York’s Albany cam­pus, the Capital Punishment Research Initiative (CPRI) is ded­i­cat­ed to con­duct­ing and sup­port­ing empir­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal stud­ies of the death penal­ty. CPRI research is con­duct­ed by the University’s grad­u­ate stu­dents and pro­fes­sors, as well as by col­lab­o­rat­ing researchers from around the coun­try. The cen­ter’s current…

Scott Christianson’s new book, Innocent: Inside Wrongful Conviction Cases, exam­ines mis­takes in New York’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem with an empha­sis on mis­tak­en iden­ti­fi­ca­tions, per­jury by eye­wit­ness­es, inef­fec­tive coun­sel, false con­fes­sions, and police and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. The book includes a log of the state’s wrong­ful con­vic­tion cas­es, includ­ing some cap­i­tal cas­es. Christianson reminds read­ers,​“Unfortunately, not much is known about…