Publications & Testimony

A new Michigan Law Review article by Professor John Blume of Cornell Law School examines the relationship between “volunteering” for execution and suicide. Blume found that nearly 88% of all death row inmates who have “volunteered” for execution have struggled with mental illness and/or substance abuse. He writes that there is an especially strong link between “volunteerism” and mental illness. Of the “volunteer” executions he reviewed, 14 involved schizophrenia and several more reported…

The Death Penalty Information Center recently became aware of two older capital cases in which the defendants had been sentenced to death but were later acquitted at re-trial. We have added Christopher McCrimmon of Arizona and Larry Fisher of Mississippi to our innocence list, bringing the total number of people released from death row on the basis of innocence to 121 since 1973. McCrimmon is the eighth person to be exonerated from Arizona’s death row, and Fisher is the second death row…

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has announced that it will issue a formal pardon this month for Lena Baker (pictured), the only woman executed in the state during the 20^th century. The document, signed by all five of the current board members, will note that the parole board’s 1945 decision to deny Baker clemency and allow her execution was “a grievous error, as this case called out for mercy.” Baker, an African American, was executed for the murder of Ernest Knight, a white man who…

An article published in the September 2004 issue of Justice Quarterly revealed that 64% of Texans support a halt to executions while questions of fairness and accuracy are addressed, and 48% of respondents lack confidence in the state’s capital punishment system. The findings were based on the 2002 edition of the annual Texas Crime Poll and the survey examined five key areas of concern about the death penalty, including questions related to innocence, fairness, race, representation, and the…

A new law review article by international death penalty expert Mark Warren concludes that the retention of capital punishment in the United States distances the nation from its closest allies “in ways both symbolic and tangible, and the costs of that isolation are rising steadily.” Warren’s article, Death, Dissent, and Diplomacy: The U.S. Death Penalty as an Obstacle to Foreign Relations, examines a broad range of concerns, including treaty compliance and global security. Warren notes that in…

UN Report Shows Declining Use of the Death Penalty Worldwide A report from the Secretary-General to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations on the status of the death penalty worldwide shows a declining use of capital punishment: The report shows an encouraging trend towards abolition and restriction of the use of capital punishment in most countries. It also shows that much remains to be done in the implementation of the safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of…

According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s quarterly report, Death Row U.S.A., the number of people on death rows around the country declined again as of July 1, 2005. The latest count of inmates is 3,415, down from 3,452 as of April 1 and down considerably from the 3,692 inmates recorded on October 1, 2002. About 54.5% of those on death row are members of racial minorities. Pennsylvania (70%) and Texas (69%) had the largest percentage of minority defendants on death row. Among the states…

Newly published research examining 340 exonerations in the United States between 1989 and 2003 found that a significant number of those who were wrongly convicted had been sentenced to death. Researchers note that this finding appears to reflect two patterns: capital defendants are more likely to be convicted in error, and false convictions are more likely to be detected when defendants are on death row. The paper, authored by Professor Samuel Gross of the University of Michigan Law School…

The Conference of Chief Justices overwhelmingly passed a resolution urging Congress to not pass the proposed Streamlined Procedures Act, which is aimed at curtailing death penalty appeals. The resolution was passed by the Chief Justices from state courts around the country at their annual meeting in Charlestown, South Carolina. Only the chief justice of Texas’ Supreme Court voted against the resolution, stating that he did not have enough time to review the document. Critics of the Streamlined…

Homicide figures for New York City show that the number of murders in 2005 may fall below 500, a figure that would be the fewest since 1961 and would bring the city’s murder rate below the rate for the nation as a whole. So far this year, random murders and murders committed during robberies and burglaries have also declined. Experts note that both declines appear to be largely attributable to a greater police presence, fewer guns, and the decrease in random violence in the city that came with…