Publications & Testimony

Premeditated: Meditations on Capital Punishment, Recent Works by Malaquias Montoya is a new art exhibition catalogue featuring recently created silkscreen images, paintings, and related research dealing with the death penalty and prisons. The works featured in this book are part of a collection of art that is currently touring the United States. Montoya has lectured and taught at numerous universities and colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Stanford, UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

While applauding a life-sentence plea bargain arranged by Palm Beach County’s State Attorney in an especially heinous murder, the Palm Beach Post said the state had “forfeit[ed] the moral standing to execute anyone else.” The State Attorney said that he agreed to let the defendant plead guilty to killing 5 people because the life-without-parole sentnece will bring finality. The Post noted: “The state saves not only the cost of a trial; the victims’ relatives — who supported the deal — do not…

In its annual eclectic collection of ideas from the past year, The New York Times Magazine included the “Foolproof Death Penalty” propsed by Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. The Times attempts “to salute the absurdly wide range of human originality” and culls its entries not only from mainstream sources but also from the “tattoo culture and fast food management, horticulture and shoe design.” In response to Romney’s notion of “error-free capital punishment,” Berkeley law professor Franklin…

According to a recent poll conducted by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, only 62% of respondents support capital punishment for persons convicted of murder, and Americans prefer the sentencing option of life without parole when given the choice. Overall support for capital punishment has fallen since Quinnipiac’s poll in June 2004, when support registered 65%. Similar shifts in public opinion found growing support for life-without-parole sentences. In the December poll when…

California already has the largest death row in the country and is now planning to build a new $220 million facility designed to house more than 1,400 death row inmates. State Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald M. George said that the large death row reflects the consequences of a careful appeals process that is designed to ensure due process for those facing execution. “The virtues of the system also represent its vices because it does end up causing a lot of delay,” stated the Chief Justice…

The Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s 1994 death penalty law is unconstitutional because it contains a provision giving the state an advantage when jurors find the aggravating and mitigating factors presented at sentencing to be equal. In that circumstance, the current law states that the defendant must be sentenced to death. The Court ruled that such a provision does not allow the jury to express a reasoned moral response to the evidence, and the process does not comport with the…

As New York lawmakers conducted the first in a series of hearings on the state’s death penalty, Robert M. Morgenthau, Manhattan’s long-serving District Attorney, recommended that New York abandon the practice: “It’s the deed that teaches, not the name we give it,” Morgenthau said, quoting George Bernard Shaw. He went on to note, “The penalty exacts a terrible price in dollars, lives, and human decency. Rather than tamping down the flames of violence, it fuels them….I urge all of our lawmakers…

Andrew Cuomo (pictured), who served as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1997 to 2001, recently urged New York lawmakers to put an end to the death penalty. The state is holding hearings on capital punishment in the wake of a N.Y. Court of Appeals decision finding the statute unconstitutional earlier this year. In his op-ed in The New York Times, Cuomo noted: The Democrats, who control the Assembly, should make it clear that they will not pass a new death penalty law. This…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACTS Wednesday, September 15, 2004 Brenda Bowser, 202.293.6970 (O), 301.906.4460 (Cell) Valerie Holford, 202.365.5336 (Additional Contacts Listed Below) DPIC ISSUES NEW INNOCENCE REPORT: 116 NOW FREED FROM DEATH ROW IN 25 STATES Public Response Measured in Declines in Death Sentencing, Death Row, Executions, and Opinion Polls WASHINGTON, DC – The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) is issuing a new report entitled Innocence and the Crisis in the American Death…

Read the Press Release. Copies may be obtained by contacting DPIC. The report will be posted on our Web site in the near future.