Publications & Testimony

On February 5^th, Texas is sched­uled to exe­cute Scott Panetti, a men­­tal­­ly-ill man who defend­ed him­self at his tri­al despite the fact that he suf­fers from schiz­o­phre­nia and bipo­lar dis­or­der. Panetti was con­vict­ed of killing his par­ents-in-law in 1992, sev­er­al years after he was first diag­nosed with schiz­o­phre­nia. He was hos­pi­tal­ized for men­tal ill­ness in numer­ous facil­i­ties before the crime. Evidence sug­gests that Panetti was psy­chot­ic at the time of the…

Former Kansas Republican state sen­a­tor Tim Emert recent­ly urged mem­bers of the Kansas Senate Judiciary Committee to enact a mora­to­ri­um on impos­ing the death sen­tence and exe­cut­ing those who have already been sen­tenced to die. Noting that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was his most trou­bling issue when he was a mem­ber of the Kansas leg­is­la­ture, Emert stat­ed,​“I came to the con­clu­sion the only vote I could live with was a​‘no’ vote on the death penal­ty in Kansas. I could not, in…

As it launched a glob­al cam­paign to end the exe­cu­tion of juve­nile offend­ers, Amnesty International released a new report entitled ​“Stop Child Executions! Ending the death penal­ty for child offend­ers.” The report con­demns the exe­cu­tion of those who com­mit crimes before reach­ing the age of 18, a pun­ish­ment the orga­ni­za­tion calls a​“heinous prac­tice due to a greater aware­ness that chil­dren con­sti­tute a​‘pro­tect­ed’ class.” In the report, Amnesty notes that only…

Georgia has enact­ed leg­is­la­tion to under­take the defense of indi­gent per­sons charged with cap­i­tal felonies for which the death penal­ty is being sought in any court in the state. The Office of the Multi-County Public Defender will become the Georgia Capital Defender Office in January 2005. The office is now seek­ing to fill key staff posi­tions.​“See Job Description” (Jan. 15, 2004); see also DPIC’s report​“With Justice for Few: The Growing Crisis in Death Penalty…

The Chinese gov­ern­ment is plan­ning to imple­ment judi­cial reforms that could sharply reduce its use of the death penal­ty. China will restrict the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment by requir­ing its high­est court, the Supreme People’s Court, to review all death penal­ty cas­es before exe­cu­tions are car­ried out. Currently, the high court reviews only a minor­i­ty of such cas­es, allow­ing the provin­cial courts that hand down death sen­tences to review their own judg­ments.​“Criticism of…

After spend­ing more than half of his life on Pennsylvania’s death row for a crime he did not com­mit, Nicholas Yarris was released from prison on Friday, January 16. Yarris had been sen­tenced to death row in 1983 for the mur­der of Linda Craig and was cleared of all charges in December 2003 (see DPIC’s press release) after DNA evi­dence exclud­ed him from the crime. He remained jailed for weeks after he was exon­er­at­ed while author­i­ties recal­cu­lat­ed sen­tences he received in Florida…

The Pacific island of Samoa has begun for­mal mea­sures to abol­ish the death penal­ty. Samoa has not con­duct­ed an exe­cu­tion in more than 50 years, and death sen­tences that are still deliv­ered by judges are always com­mut­ed to life impris­on­ment. As he intro­duced the statute to abol­ish the death penal­ty, Prime Minister Sailele Malielegaoi told par­lia­ment that the death penal­ty should not be on the law books if it is not going to be car­ried out. (ONE News and AAP, January 16,…

DPIC has pre­pared a new chart show­ing the num­ber of death sen­tences in each state by year since 1977. As we have indi­cat­ed else­where, the over­all num­ber of death sen­tences in the U.S. has declined marked­ly in recent years. For exam­ple, the 159 death sen­tences in 2002 were only HALF of the 320 sen­tences in 1996. Regionally, sen­tences in the West have dropped the most, from 66 in 1996 to 21 in 2002. DPIC’s chart is based on Bureau of Justice Statistics’ reports. For more…

The Associated Press pro­vid­ed a descrip­tion of the strug­gle to exe­cute Ohio death row inmate Lewis Williams on January 14,…

A month after New Jersey’s leg­is­la­ture passed by a wide mar­gin a bipar­ti­san bill call­ing for the cre­ation of a study com­mis­sion to exam­ine the cost, fair­ness and effects of cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions in the state, Governor James McGreevey has vetoed the mea­sure. The bill passed the leg­is­la­ture in December 2003 with the sup­port of key state law­mak­ers, includ­ing death penal­ty pro­po­nents. In recent years, pub­lic sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in gen­er­al has sharply…