Studies

The Tulsa World of Oklahoma recent­ly con­duct­ed an inves­ti­ga­tion into the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col in the wake of the botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in April. Comparing Oklahoma’s pro­to­col to those of 19 oth­er states, the study found that Oklahoma lacks basic safe­guards fol­lowed in many oth­er states. Among those are reg­u­lar train­ing for the exe­cu­tion team, the avail­abil­i­ty of back­up drugs in the event of a prob­lem with the ini­tial injec­tion, and spec­i­fied pro­ce­dures for deter­min­ing whether the inmate is uncon­scious. The World ques­tioned Oklahoma’s deci­sion to use a…

The most recent issue of The Angolite, a mag­a­zine writ­ten and pub­lished by pris­on­ers at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, which hous­es the state’s death row, con­tains a num­ber of arti­cles rel­e­vant to the death penal­ty. The first, ​“Shifting Values,” dis­cuss­es the declin­ing use of the death penal­ty through an exam­i­na­tion of devel­op­ments in 2013. A sec­ond arti­cle, ​“Death House Cat & Mouse,” reports on Louisiana’s com­pli­cat­ed strug­gle to obtain lethal injec­tion drugs for exe­cu­tions. Another lengthy arti­cle, ​“First, Do No Harm,” dis­cuss­es the his­to­ry of med­ical exper­i­men­ta­tion on prisoners…

The American Bar Association has released a new pub­li­ca­tion, The State of Criminal Justice 2014, exam­in­ing major issues, trends and sig­nif­i­cant changes in America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The chap­ter devot­ed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was writ­ten by Ronald Tabak, an attor­ney at Skadden Arps. Tabak presents evi­dence of the declin­ing use of the death penal­ty in death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly not­ing the grow­ing geo­graph­ic iso­la­tion of the death penal­ty. He also high­lights numer­ous stud­ies and cas­es regard­ing inno­cence and racial bias. He con­cludes, “[I]t is vital that the legal profession…

Following the botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma in April, President Obama ordered the Justice Department to review death penal­ty pro­ce­dures in the states. Though a time­line for the study has not been released, the depart­ment has already reached out to at least one orga­ni­za­tion, the Constitution Project, which pro­posed sev­er­al reforms in its recent report on the death penal­ty, includ­ing the estab­lish­ing of an office at the Justice Department to review inno­cence claims from death row pris­on­ers. The group alos asked for more infor­ma­tion about fed­er­al death penalty…

The Bureau of Justice Statistics recent­ly issued a new report, ​“Capital Punishment, 2012,” ana­lyz­ing the use of the death penal­ty in that year and reveal­ing over­all trends since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed. The report not­ed that 2012 was ​“the twelfth con­sec­u­tive year in which the num­ber of inmates under sen­tence of death decreased.” Among the sta­tis­tics not report­ed else­where, BJS not­ed that the time between sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion in 2012 was 15.8 years. The aver­age time for all exe­cu­tions since 1976 was 11.3 years. The aver­age age of those…

On May 7, the Constitution Project released a new report, Irreversible Error, call­ing for reforms in many aspects of the death penal­ty sys­tem. The Project’s Death Penalty Committee, which con­sists of renowned experts on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, made sug­ges­tions for reduc­ing the risk of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent and improv­ing the fair­ness of cap­i­tal cas­es from arrest and inter­ro­ga­tion, through pros­e­cu­tion and appeals, to the exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dure itself. ​“Without sub­stan­tial revi­sions — not only to lethal injec­tion, but across the board — the admin­is­tra­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in America is unjust, disproportionate…

President Obama has ordered Attorney General Eric Holder to review the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in the U.S. fol­low­ing the failed exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma on April 29. The President not­ed con­cerns about inno­cence and racial bias: ​“In the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in this coun­try, we have seen sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems — racial bias, uneven appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty, you know, sit­u­a­tions in which there were indi­vid­u­als on death row who lat­er on were dis­cov­ered to have been inno­cent because of excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence. And all…

On April 28 a study pub­lished in the pres­tigous Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indi­cat­ed that far more inno­cent peo­ple have been sen­tenced to death than those found through the legal process. According to the study, many inno­cent defen­dants are prob­a­bly not being iden­ti­fied because they were tak­en off death row and giv­en a less­er sen­tence. The rate of exon­er­a­tions for those sen­tenced to death would be over twice as high if all cas­es were giv­en the height­ened scruti­ny often accord­ed to those who remain on death row.…

In 2011, the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court appoint­ed a blue-rib­bon Commission to review the state’s death penal­ty and to make rec­om­men­da­tions for reform. On April 10, the Commission pre­pared to announce 56 rec­om­men­da­tions for chang­ing the death penal­ty, includ­ing:

A recent study by researchers at Cornell Law School found that the gen­der of the mur­der vic­tim may influ­ence whether a defen­dant receives the death penal­ty. Using data from 1976 to 2007 in Delaware, the study found that in cas­es with female vic­tims, 47.1% result­ed in death sen­tences, while in those involv­ing male vic­tims, only 32.3% were sen­tenced to death. The researchers looked at a num­ber of fac­tors oth­er than the vic­tim’s gen­der that might have affect­ed sen­tenc­ing deci­sions, includ­ing the heinous­ness of the crime, whether there was a sexual…