Studies

A new study from researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill finds that the most like­ly out­come for a cap­i­tal case once a death sen­tence has been imposed is that the defen­dan­t’s con­vic­tion or sen­tence will be reversed on appeal. Execution is only the third most likely…

Legislators in Ohio are seek­ing to enact death penal­ty reforms as the state grap­ples with prob­lems in the appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Sen. Bill Seitz, a Republican, and Sen. Sandra Williams, a Democrat, are work­ing on four bills to address some of the reforms rec­om­mend­ed by the Ohio Supreme Court Death Penalty Task Force last year. The bills would pre­vent the exe­cu­tion of defen­dants with seri­ous men­tal impair­ments, estab­lish a fund for indigent…

A February 2015 study by the Brennan Center for Justice exam­ined sev­er­al pos­si­ble expla­na­tions for the dra­mat­ic drop in crime in the U.S. in the 1990s and 2000s. Among the the­o­ries stud­ied was use of the death penal­ty, which the report found had no effect on the decline in crime. The authors explained, ​“Empirically, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is too infre­quent to have a mea­sure­able effect on the crime drop. Criminologically, the exis­tence and use of the death penal­ty may not even…

In February 2015, the Brennan Center for Justice released a report exam­in­ing poten­tial expla­na­tions for the dra­mat­ic drop in crime in the U.S. in the 1990s and 2000s. The death penal­ty was one of the pos­si­ble con­tribut­ing caus­es the researchers eval­u­at­ed. The report’s con­clu­sion: the death penal­ty had no effect on the decline in crime. The authors explained: ​“Empirically, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is too infre­quent to have a mea­sure­able effect on the crime drop. Criminologically, the existence and…

According to a new study prin­ci­pal­ly authored by Prof. Frank Baumgartner of the University of North Carolina, the death penal­ty is far more like­ly to be used if the under­ly­ing mur­der vic­tim was white rather than black. The study exam­ined every U.S. exe­cu­tion from 1976 – 2013 and found, ​“The sin­gle most reli­able pre­dic­tor of whether a defen­dant in the United States will be exe­cut­ed is the race of the vic­tim.… Capital pun­ish­ment is very rarely used where the vic­tim is a Black male, despite the…

A grow­ing body of research into ado­les­cent brain devel­op­ment indi­cates that the brains of even those over the age of 18 con­tin­ue to phys­i­cal­ly change in ways relat­ed to cul­pa­bil­i­ty for crim­i­nal offens­es. The Supreme Court referred to such sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence regard­ing those under the age of 18 when it struck down the death penal­ty for juve­niles in 2005 (Roper v. Simmons) and when it recent­ly lim­it­ed life with­out parole sen­tences for juve­niles. According to Laurence Steinberg…

A Seattle University study exam­in­ing the costs of the death penal­ty in Washington found that each death penal­ty case cost an aver­age of $1 mil­lion more than a sim­i­lar case where the death penal­ty was not sought ($3.07 mil­lion, ver­sus $2.01 mil­lion). Defense costs were about three times as high in death penal­ty cas­es and pros­e­cu­tion costs were as much as four times high­er than for non-death penal­ty cas­es. Criminal Justice Professor Peter Collins, the lead author of the study,…

The Patriot-News in Pennsylvania is run­ning a series of arti­cles exam­in­ing the state’s death penal­ty in antic­i­pa­tion of a com­pre­hen­sive report on the death penal­ty com­mis­sioned by the state leg­is­la­ture. Pennsylvania has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 1999, and all three of its exe­cu­tions in the mod­ern era were inmates who waived their appeals. Incoming Governor Tom Wolf has said he may hold off on allow­ing exe­cu­tions until the state addresses…

In a recent op-ed in the Louisville Courier-Journal, three for­mer Kentucky pros­e­cu­tors advo­cat­ed for repeal of the death penal­ty. Citing the find­ings of a study by the American Bar Association on Kentucky’s law, Joseph P. Gutmann (pic­tured), Stephen Ryan, and J. Stewart Schneider said, “[T]he death penal­ty is bro­ken beyond repair in Kentucky.” Among the report’s find­ings were a reversal rate…

On December 19, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released its annu­al sta­tis­ti­cal report on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States, with infor­ma­tion for 2013. It not­ed a con­tin­u­ing decline in the death row pop­u­la­tion and the num­ber of exe­cu­tions. Highlights of the report…