Studies

Defending a death penal­ty case costs about four times as much as defend­ing a case where the death penal­ty is not sought, accord­ing to a new study by the Kansas Judicial Council. Examining 34 poten­tial death-penal­ty cas­es from 2004 – 2011, the study found that defense costs for death penal­ty tri­als aver­aged $395,762 per case, com­pared to $98,963 per case when the death penal­ty was not sought. Costs incurred by the tri­al court showed a sim­i­lar dis­par­i­ty: $72,530 for cas­es with the death penal­ty; $21,554 for those with­out. Even in cas­es that…

Two recent reports released in Ohio show a decline in the use of the death penal­ty, with one of the reports rais­ing con­cerns about the fair­ness of the sys­tem. The num­ber of death-penal­ty cas­es filed in Ohio in 2013 was the low­est num­ber in over 30 years. The num­ber of cap­i­tal indict­ments was down 28% from 2012 and 63% from 2011, accord­ing to a report from Ohioans to Stop Executions, ​“The Death Lottery: How Race and Geography Determine Who Goes to Ohio’s Death Row.” Ohio had 4 death sen­tences in…

Further analy­sis of a recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that sup­port for the death penal­ty was sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er among some racial and eth­nic minori­ties than for the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. More Hispanics oppose the death penal­ty (50%) than sup­port it (40%), and the same is true of African Americans, with only about a third (36%) favor­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and a major­i­ty (55%) oppos­ing it. Democrats are about even­ly split, with 45% in favor and 47% opposed, while 71% of Republicans sup­port it. Black Protestants and Hispanic Catholics were…

Amnesty International recent­ly released its annu­al report on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment around the world, not­ing, ​“Developments in the world­wide use of the death penal­ty in 2013 con­firmed that its appli­ca­tion is con­fined to a small minor­i­ty of coun­tries.” As illus­trat­ed in the chart at left, over the past decade there has been an increase in the num­ber of coun­tries abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty and a decrease in coun­tries car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions. Because exe­cu­tions in China remain a state secret, Amnesty was not able to deter­mine the num­ber of exe­cu­tions world­wide. Of…

A new, but lim­it­ed, study of the costs of the death penal­ty in Idaho found that cap­i­tal cas­es are more cost­ly and take much more time to resolve than non-cap­i­tal cas­es. One mea­sure of death-penal­ty costs was reflect­ed in the time spent by attor­neys han­dling appeals. The State Appellate Public Defenders office spent about 44 times more time on a typ­i­cal death penal­ty appeal than on a life sen­tence appeal (almost 8,000 hours per cap­i­tal defen­dant com­pared to about 180 hours per non-death penal­ty defen­dant). Capital cas­es with tri­als took…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row, USA shows the total death row pop­u­la­tion con­tin­u­ing to decline in size. The U.S. death-row pop­u­la­tion decreased from 3,108 on April 1, 2013, to 3,095 on July 1, 2013. The new total rep­re­sent­ed a 12% decrease from 10 years ear­li­er, when the death row pop­u­la­tion was 3,517. The states with the largest death rows were California (733), Florida (412), Texas (292), Pennsylvania (197), and Alabama (197). In the past 10 years, the size of Texas’s death row has shrunk…

According to a recent study by Professor Katherine Beckett of the University of Washington, jurors in Washington are three times more like­ly to rec­om­mend a death sen­tence for a black defen­dant than for a white defen­dant in a sim­i­lar case. The dis­par­i­ty in sen­tenc­ing occurred despite the fact that pros­e­cu­tors were slight­ly more like­ly to seek the death penal­ty against white defendants.

Support for the death penal­ty has fall­en sharply by 23 per­cent­age points since 1996, reach­ing its low­est lev­el in almost two decades, accord­ing to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center. The 2013 poll also found a 10 point drop in just the last 2 years in respon­dents who say they ​“strong­ly favor” the death penal­ty, from 28% to 18%. The per­cent­age of Americans who say they oppose the death penal­ty has risen to 37%. In 2011, Pew asked respon­dents about the rea­sons behind their views on the death…

A new poll by the Barna Group found that only 40% of prac­tic­ing Christians sup­port­ed the death penal­ty, and sup­port was even low­er among younger Christians. According to the poll released on January 17, only 23% of prac­tic­ing Christian ​“mil­len­ni­als” (i.e., those born between 1980 and 2000) agreed with the state­ment: ​“The gov­ern­ment should have the option to exe­cute the worst crim­i­nals.” Without regard to their reg­u­lar prac­tice of their faith, only 42% of Christian baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) and only 32% of mil­len­ni­als agreed with the…

The Kansas Judicial Council, an advi­so­ry body to the leg­is­la­ture, released pre­lim­i­nary find­ings on the cost of the death penal­ty in prepa­ra­tion for leg­isla­tive hear­ings on a repeal mea­sure. The coun­cil found that state Supreme Court Justices spend 20 times more hours on death penal­ty appeals than on non-cap­i­tal appeals; the Department of Corrections spends than twice as much ($49,380 ver­sus $24,690) to house a death-row inmate per year as to house a gen­er­al-pop­u­la­tion inmate; and cap­i­tal cas­es take more than twice as many days in dis­trict court as non-capital…