Studies

In April, the International Commission Against the Death Penalty (ICDP) released a new report titled, How States Abolish the Death Penalty. The report exam­ines the expe­ri­ences of 13 coun­tries, includ­ing Argentina, France, Haiti, the Philippines, South Africa, and 2 states in the U.S. (Connecticut and New Mexico), in their paths to end­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The report not­ed that some states took inter­me­di­ary steps to abo­li­tion, includ­ing estab­lish­ing an offi­cial mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, reduc­ing the scope of the death penal­ty, or remov­ing manda­to­ry sen­tences. The report rec­om­mend­ed vig­or­ous pub­lic debate on…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row USA showed a con­tin­u­ing decline in the num­ber of peo­ple on death rows across the coun­try. As of January 1, 2013, there were 3,125 inmates under a sen­tence of death, a decrease of 43 from a year ago. Over the last decade, the size of death row has dropped almost 16%, from 3,703 inmates in 2000 to 3,125 in 2013. California con­tin­ued to have the largest death row pop­u­la­tion (727), fol­lowed by Florida (413), Texas (300), and Pennsylvania (202).…

George F. Will, con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor of the Washington Post, recent­ly drew a les­son about the death penal­ty from the doc­u­men­tary The Central Park Five, which airs on PBS on Tuesday, April 16. Will wrote, “[T]his recount­ing of a mul­ti­fac­eted but, for­tu­nate­ly, not fatal fail­ure of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem but­tress­es the con­ser­v­a­tive case against the death penal­ty: Its final­i­ty leaves no room for rec­ti­fy­ing mis­takes.” The Central Park Five tells the sto­ry of five juve­nile defen­dants (four African Americans and one Hispanic) who were con­vict­ed of the 1989 rape and…

A new report from the Death Penalty Project, titled The Death Penalty in Japan, pro­vides an assess­ment of that country’s oblig­a­tions under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a treaty which both Japan and the U.S. have rat­i­fied. While retain­ing the death penal­ty is not itself a breach of the treaty, the report states Japan is under an oblig­a­tion to devel­op domes­tic laws and prac­tices that pro­gres­sive­ly restrict the use of the death penal­ty. According to the report, Japan has failed to meet the treaty’s require­ments for…

According to a new report from Amnesty International, the inter­na­tion­al trend away from the death penal­ty gen­er­al­ly con­tin­ued in 2012. The num­ber of coun­tries in which death sen­tences were imposed fell from 63 to 58. The num­ber of coun­tries that have com­plete­ly abol­ished the death penal­ty stood at 97. Ten years ago, this fig­ure stood at 80. In total, 140 coun­tries world­wide have end­ed the death penal­ty in law or in prac­tice. However, 3 coun­tries – India, Pakistan, and the Gambia – returned to car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions in 2012 after many years of having…

Since the 1990s, almost every death penal­ty state has expe­ri­enced a dra­mat­ic decline in its annu­al num­ber of death sen­tences. DPIC has pre­pared a series of graphs illus­trat­ing this trend in each state: State Death Sentences by Year. This page con­tains graphs show­ing the annu­al num­ber of new sen­tences in each state between 1994 and 2012. These same graphs can be found indi­vid­u­al­ly on each state’s State Information page. Nationally, there was a 75% decrease in new death sen­tences between 1994 and 2012. Using the same years of com­par­i­son, death…

A new study regard­ing the use of the death penal­ty in Harris County, Texas, was released in con­junc­tion with the fil­ing of an appeal by Harris County death row inmate, Duane Buck. The research was con­duct­ed by Professor Raymond Paternoster of the University of Maryland, who exam­ined over 500 mur­der cas­es in the coun­ty. The study found that, in cas­es with cir­cum­stances sim­i­lar to Buck’s and dur­ing the time in which he was tried, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office sought the death penal­ty 3.5 times more often when the…

The Texas Tribune recent­ly pub­lished a six-part series exam­in­ing the plight of men­tal­ly ill defen­dants in the Texas crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The series focused par­tic­u­lar­ly on death penal­ty cas­es, includ­ing that of Andre Thomas, a man with a long his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness. He pulled his own eye out in 2004, and lat­er explained that he did it because he kept see­ing his wife, whom he killed along with his chil­dren just days before. Thomas is among thou­sands of men­tal­ly ill inmates in the Texas sys­tem, which has seen years…

A recent study of Colorado​’s death penal­ty con­clud­ed that the pun­ish­ment is applied so rarely and with­out clear statu­to­ry stan­dards as to ren­der it con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly unfair. Professors Justin Marceau (left) and Sam Kamin (cen­ter) from the University of Denver College of Law, and Professor Wanda Foglia (right) of Rowan University exam­ined mur­der con­vic­tions in the state from 1999 to 2010. The authors dis­cov­ered that, while the death penal­ty was an option in approx­i­mate­ly 92% of first degree mur­ders, it was sought by pros­e­cu­tors in only 3% of the cas­es, pursued…