Studies

Officials in Indiana recent­ly dis­cussed how rarely the death penal­ty is applied in the state and the issues that rais­es regard­ing its pur­pose. Professor Joel Schuum of the McKinney School of Law in Indiana chaired a study by the American Bar Association that found ​“only a few of Indiana’s mur­der cas­es result in a pros­e­cu­tor seek­ing a death sen­tence, few­er still result in the impo­si­tion of a death sen­tence by a jury or judges, and only a hand­ful over the past 3 decades have result­ed in the exe­cu­tion of a…

Two new reports on the death penal­ty are avail­able from the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States recent­ly released a report con­tain­ing excerpts from the most impor­tant death-penal­ty deci­sions issued by the IACHR in the past fif­teen years, includ­ing cas­es from Barbados, Cuba, Guatemala, Guyana, Grenada, Jamaica, Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States. The International Commission against the Death Penalty released a report in January con­tain­ing a coun­try-by-coun­try overview of crimes eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty around the world.…

The the­o­ry of the death penal­ty is that pros­e­cu­tors select offend­ers who have com­mit­ted aggra­vat­ed mur­der and obtain death sen­tences for the most heinous offend­ers through a scrupu­lous tri­al with full due process. The real­i­ty in Pennsylvania is rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent. Hundreds of inmates have been sen­tenced to death, but of the cas­es that have com­plet­ed the appeals process, 100% have been over­turned, most­ly because of errors in the con­vic­tion or sen­tenc­ing stages. (Three inmates were exe­cut­ed, but they waived their appeals; the rest of those sen­tenced to death remain on…

A recent Gallup Poll mea­sured Americans’ abstract sup­port for the death penal­ty at 63%, the sec­ond-low­est lev­el of sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment since 1978, and a sig­nif­i­cant decline from 1994, when 80% of respon­dents were in favor of the death penal­ty. Gallup not­ed the results of the poll may have been affect­ed by the fact that it was con­duct­ed a few days after the shoot­ings in Newtown, Connecticut. In 2011 Gallup found 61% in sup­port of the death penal­ty, the low­est lev­el in 40 years. When Gallup and oth­er polls…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund​’s Death Row USA showed a decrease of 43 inmates under sen­tence of death from January 1 to October 1, 2012. Over the last decade, the total pop­u­la­tion of state and fed­er­al death rows has decreased sig­nif­i­cant­ly, from 3,703 inmates in 2000 to 3,146 inmates as of October 2012. California con­tin­ues to have the largest death row pop­u­la­tion (724), fol­lowed by Florida (411), Texas (304), Pennsylvania (204), and Alabama (202). Neither California nor Pennsylvania has car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in the past…

A new report on the death penal­ty in Texas found that death sen­tences have declined by more than 75% since 2002, and more than half of all new death sen­tences were imposed in the Dallas-Fort Worth area this year, while no new death sen­tences were imposed in Harris County (Houston) for the third time in five years. The report, ​“Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2012: The Year in Review” by the Texas Coalition to Abolish Death Penalty, stat­ed there were 9 new death sen­tences in 2012, near the record low…

On December 13, North Carolina Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks reduced the sen­tences of three death row inmates to life with­out parole after find­ing that race played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the selec­tion of the juries in their cases.

According to Gary Syphus of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst’s Office in Utah, seek­ing the death penal­ty costs the state an addi­tion­al $1.6 mil­lion per inmate from tri­al to exe­cu­tion com­pared to life-with­out-parole cas­es. Syphus offered this esti­mate to the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Interim Committee of the Utah leg­is­la­ture on November 14. Republican state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Steve Handy had asked for an exam­i­na­tion of the state and local gov­ern­ment costs asso­ci­at­ed with imple­ment­ing the death penal­ty in Utah. Although he has not pro­posed any leg­is­la­tion, Handy said that the…

According to the 2012 American Values Survey con­duct­ed by the Public Religion Research Institute, Americans are now even­ly divid­ed on whether the death penal­ty or life with­out parole is the appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment for mur­der, while Catholics more strong­ly favor life sen­tences. The September sur­vey found that 47% of respon­dents favored life with­out parole, while 46% opt­ed for the death penal­ty. The poll showed that life with­out parole was favored by Democrats (57%), African-Americans (64%), Hispanic-Americans (56%), and mil­len­ni­als (age 18 to 29) (55%). Support for the death penal­ty was stronger…