Studies

Whether the death penal­ty will be sought in a mur­der may depend more on the bud­get of the coun­ty in which it is com­mit­ted than on the sever­i­ty of the crime, accord­ing to sev­er­al pros­e­cu­tors. A report by the Marshall Project found that the high costs of cap­i­tal cas­es pre­vent some dis­trict attor­neys from seek­ing the death penal­ty. ​“You have to be very respon­si­ble in select­ing where you want to spend your mon­ey,” said Stephen Taylor, a pros­e­cu­tor in Liberty County, Texas. ​“You…

On December 18, DPIC released its annu­al report on the lat­est devel­op­ments in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, ​“The Death Penalty in 2014: Year End Report.” In 2014, 35 peo­ple were exe­cut­ed, the fewest in 20 years. Death sen­tences dropped to their low­est lev­el in the mod­ern era of the death penal­ty, with 72 peo­ple sen­tenced to death, the small­est num­ber in 40 years. Just sev­en states car­ried out exe­cu­tions, and three states (Texas, Missouri, and…

In a series of arti­cles ana­lyz­ing Pennsylvania’s death penal­ty, the Reading Eagle found that tax­pay­ers have spent over $350 mil­lion on the death penal­ty over a peri­od in which the state has car­ried out just three exe­cu­tions, all of inmates who dropped their appeals. Using data from a Maryland cost study, which con­clud­ed that death penal­ty cas­es cost $1.9 mil­lion more than sim­i­lar cas­es in which the death penal­ty was not sought, the newspaper…

A recent study com­mis­sioned by the Nevada leg­is­la­ture found that the aver­age death penal­ty case costs a half mil­lion dol­lars more than a case in which the death penal­ty is not sought. The Legislative Auditor esti­mat­ed the cost of a mur­der tri­al in which the death penal­ty was sought cost $1.03 to $1.3 mil­lion, where­as cas­es with­out the death penal­ty cost $775,000. The audi­tor sum­ma­rized the study’s find­ings, say­ing, ​“Adjudicating death penal­ty cas­es takes more time and…

On November 24, the FBI released a report on law enforce­ment offi­cers killed in the line of duty in 2013. Twenty-sev­en (27) offi­cers were killed in ​“felo­nious acts,” a 45% drop com­pared to 2012, when 49 offi­cers were killed, and a 53% decline since 2004. Most (15) of the 27 offi­cers killed were in the South, with Texas hav­ing the high­est num­ber of any state (6). Six offi­cers were killed in the West, four in the Midwest, and only two in the Northeast.

In Part Two of its inves­ti­ga­tion into the fed­er­al review of state death penal­ty cas­es, Death by Deadline, The Marshall Project found that in almost every case where lawyers missed crti­ical fil­ing dead­lines for fed­er­al appeals, the only per­son sanc­tioned was the death row pris­on­er. Often the inmate’s entire fed­er­al review was for­feit­ed. The report high­light­ed the dis­par­i­ty between the 17 fed­er­al judi­cial dis­tricts where gov­ern­ment-fund­ed attorneys…

An inves­ti­ga­tion by The Marshall Project showed that since Congress put strict time restric­tions on fed­er­al appeals in 1996, lawyers for death row inmates missed the dead­line at least 80 times, includ­ing 16 in which the pris­on­ers have since been exe­cut­ed. The most recent of such cas­es occurred on Nov. 13, when Chadwick Banks was put to death in Florida with no review in fed­er­al court. This final part of a death penal­ty appeal, also called habeas…

(Click left image to enlarge). A new study by researchers at Cornell University exam­ined the effects of Delaware​’s deci­sion to trans­fer cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing author­i­ty from the jury to the judge at tri­al. The study used data from cap­i­tal cas­es between 1977 and 2007, dur­ing which time Delaware made the shift to judge sen­tenc­ing – one of very few states to employ that pro­ce­dure. According to the study, ​“Judges were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to give a…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row, USA showed a con­tin­u­ing decline in the size of the death row pop­u­la­tion. The new total of 3,035 rep­re­sent­ed a 13% drop from 10 years ear­li­er, when the death row pop­u­la­tion was 3,471. The racial demo­graph­ics of death row have been steady, with white inmates mak­ing up 43% of death row, black inmates com­pos­ing 42%, and Latino inmates 13%. California con­tin­ued to have the largest death row,…