Studies

On October 29, the U.S. Justice Department released the annu­al FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2011, indi­cat­ing that the nation­al mur­der rate dropped 1.5% from 2010. This decline occurred at a time when the use of the death penal­ty is also decreas­ing nation­al­ly. The Northeast region, which uses the death penal­ty the least, had the low­est mur­der rate of the 4 geo­graph­ic regions, and saw a 6.4% fur­ther decrease in its mur­der rate in 2011, the largest decrease of…

A news­pa­per’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the costs of the death penal­ty in Florida revealed the state is spend­ing as much as $1 mil­lion per inmate just for incar­cer­a­tion and appel­late costs. Trial costs would add sub­stan­tial­ly to the state’s total. Florida has over 400 inmates on death row. For exam­ple, keep­ing J.B. Parker under the spe­cial secu­ri­ty of death row for 29 years has cost tax­pay­ers $688,000; his appeals cost $296,000, for a total of $984,000. The total for Alfonso Cave…

On October 2, Judge Gregory Weeks heard tes­ti­mo­ny regard­ing racial bias in jury selec­tion, as three North Carolina death row inmates chal­lenged their sen­tences under the state’s Racial Justice Act. Prof. Barbara O’Brien of Michigan State University pro­vid­ed sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence of racial bias in the fre­quent rejec­tion of African-American poten­tial jurors from death penal­ty tri­als in the state. According to O’Brien’s study, qual­i­fied black jurors were twice as…

Legislators and oth­er offi­cials in Utah are express­ing con­cerns about the high costs of the death penal­ty and its lack of deter­rent effect. Speaking before the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Interim Committee, Republican State Representative Steve Handy (pic­tured) said, ​“In today’s world, the death penal­ty is so infre­quent­ly used that I don’t believe it is any kind of a deter­rent.” The Davis County pros­e­cu­tor, Troy Rawlings, a pro­po­nent of the death…

A new study con­duct­ed by law pro­fes­sors Justin Marceau (left) and Sam Kamin (mid­dle) of the University of Denver and Wanda Foglia (right) of Rowan University found that the death penal­ty in Colorado is applied so rarely as to ren­der the sys­tem uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The authors con­clud­ed that Colorado’s death penal­ty law is applic­a­ble to almost all first-degree mur­ders, but is imposed so infre­quent­ly that it fails to pro­vide the…

On August 3, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States (OAS), which includes the U.S., called for a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the region and released a report review­ing key areas of con­cern about the death penal­ty. The report made a series of rec­om­men­da­tions for mem­ber States, includ­ing: — States should refrain from any mea­sure that would expand the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty or rein­tro­duce it, — States should take…

In June, the National Institute of Justice released the results of a study to deter­mine how often mod­ern DNA test­ing of evi­dence from old­er cas­es con­firms the orig­i­nal con­vic­tion. The study, con­duct­ed by the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C, test­ed DNA evi­dence that had been retained in homi­cide and sex­u­al assault con­vic­tions that occurred between 1973 and 1987 in Virginia. Among the homi­cides, there were not enough cas­es in which DNA would be determinative…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row USA shows a decrease of 19 inmates between January 1 and April 1, 2012. Over the last decade, the total pop­u­la­tion of state and fed­er­al death rows has decreased sig­nif­i­cant­ly, from 3,682 inmates in 2000 to 3,170 inmates as of April 2012. California con­tin­ues to have the largest death row pop­u­la­tion (724), fol­lowed by Florida (407), Texas (308), Pennsylvania (204), and Alabama (200). Neither California nor…

Two researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Professors Justin Wolfers (pic­tured) and Betsey Stevenson, recent­ly explained why decades of stud­ies have failed to show a reli­able deter­rent effect from the death penal­ty. The authors cit­ed a 2012 report from the National Academy of Sciences, con­clud­ing that the deter­rence stud­ies of the past 30 years ​“should not influ­ence pol­i­cy judg­ments about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” Wolfers…

A new study con­duct­ed by researchers at Duke University found that the racial com­po­si­tion of jury pools has a pro­found effect on the prob­a­bil­i­ty of a black defen­dant being con­vict­ed. According to the study led by Professor Patrick Bayer of Duke, juries formed from all-white jury pools in Florida con­vict­ed black defen­dants 16 per­cent more often than white defen­dants. In cas­es with no black poten­tial jurors in the jury pool, black defen­dants were con­vict­ed 81 per­cent of the…