Publications & Testimony

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…

Attorneys from the New York Capital Defender Office have fol­lowed the lead of var­i­ous death penal­ty experts and peti­tioned the New York Court of Appeals to require a high­er stan­dard of proof of guilt before a death sen­tence may be sought. The cur­rent stan­dard of​“beyond a rea­son­able doubt” of guilt applies in both cap­i­tal and non-cap­i­­tal cas­es. Because of the evi­dence of mis­takes in death penal­ty cas­es, the attor­neys called for proof​“beyond any doubt” in such cases.

Kamala Harris, the new­­ly-elec­t­ed San Francisco District Attorney, recent­ly spoke about her approach to keep­ing the community…

A recent Harris Poll found that only 41% of Americans believe that the death penal­ty deters crime, mark­ing the small­est num­ber of such respon­dents in 27 years of this poll. Only 37% of those polled would con­tin­ue to sup­port cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment if they believed​“that quite a sub­stan­tial num­ber of inno­cent peo­ple are con­vict­ed of mur­der.” Overall, 69% per­cent of those polled said that they sup­port cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The poll was con­duct­ed in December 2003. (PR…

While the num­ber of death sen­tences in the United States has fall­en in recent years, the drop in the rate of death sen­tenc­ing has been even more dra­mat­ic. The death sen­tenc­ing rate is the num­ber of death sen­tences divid­ed by the pop­u­la­tion, and is one mea­sure of a coun­try’s sup­port for the death penal­ty. The pro­ject­ed rate of sen­tenc­ing for 2003, 0.048 per 100,000 peo­ple, is the low­est rate since the rein­state­ment of the death penal­ty in 1976. For more…