Studies

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund​’s ​“Death Row USA” showed a slight increase of 9 inmates in the death row pop­u­la­tion in the United States between October 1, 2010 and January 1, 2011. However, death row is still sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er now (3,251 inmates) than in 2000 (3,682 inmates). The size of death row also declined over­all in 2010. The size of death row is affect­ed by the num­ber of death sen­tences and the num­ber of exe­cu­tions. Nationally, the racial com­po­si­tion of those on death row is 44%…

A new report by Professor James S. Liebman (pic­tured) and Peter Clarke from Columbia University Law School ana­lyzes the declin­ing use of the death penal­ty and con­cludes that, although it is abstract­ly sup­port­ed by two-thirds of the pub­lic, the death penal­ty is actu­al­ly prac­ticed by only a dis­tinct minor­i­ty of juris­dic­tions in the United States. In their forth­com­ing arti­cle, ​“Minority Practice, Majority’s Burden: The Death Penalty Today,” Liebman and Clarke attempt to explain why the use of the death penal­ty tends to pre­dom­i­nate in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties, and why rel­a­tive­ly few…

A new study by Professor Franklin Zimring of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law pro­vides an in-depth analy­sis of the fac­tors that influ­enced the dra­mat­ic twen­ty-year decline of street crime in New York City. According to the study, which was recent­ly dis­cussed in Scientific American, the rate of com­mon crimes such as homi­cide, rob­bery and bur­glary dropped by more than 80 per­cent in New York City. By 2009, the homi­cide rate was low­er than it was in 1961. Zimring sug­gests that one of the most influ­en­tial fac­tors in…

Seeking the death penal­ty in Indiana is very expen­sive, even though most cas­es in which the death penal­ty is sought do not end in an exe­cu­tion. According to the Indiana Public Defender Council, only 16% per­cent of death penal­ty cas­es in the state filed between 1990 and 2009 (30 out of 188) end­ed with a death sen­tence, and even few­er result­ed in an exe­cu­tion. In Vanderburgh County, where tax­pay­ers have spent $800,000 in the last two decades defend­ing cap­i­tal cas­es, only one of the last five death penal­ty tri­als has…

The Death Penalty Information Center has pre­pared a sum­ma­ry of a com­pre­hen­sive cost study of California​’s death penal­ty sys­tem recent­ly pub­lished by fed­er­al Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School Professor Paula M. Mitchell. The orig­i­nal study is enti­tled Executing the Will of the Voters?: A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature’s Multi-Billion Dollar Death Penalty Debacle, and it was pub­lished in a spe­cial issue of the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review. Using charts, graphs, and per­ti­nent quotes, DPIC’s sum­ma­ry shows how the authors arrived at…

A report released by Amnesty International in July looks at recent devel­op­ments in the lethal injec­tion con­tro­ver­sy in the U.S. and pro­vides an overview of the death penal­ty since it was rein­stat­ed in 1976 in Gregg v. Georgia. Amnesty’s report, enti­tled ​“An Embarrassment of Hitches: Reflections on the Death Penalty, 35 Years After Gregg v. Georgia, As States Scramble for Lethal Injection Drugs,” begins with a dis­cus­sion of a law­suit filed by attor­neys for Arizona death row inmate Donald Beaty against fed­er­al author­i­ties for allow­ing the impor­ta­tion of sodi­um thiopental…

On July 29, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled that the state’s Forensic Science Commission (FSC) does not have author­i­ty to review evi­dence regard­ing the pos­si­ble inno­cence of Cameron Todd Willingham (pic­tured), who was exe­cut­ed in 2004. Willingham was con­vict­ed of set­ting the fire that killed his three chil­dren, but inves­tig­tions by promi­nent foren­sic sci­en­tists have dis­cred­it­ed the evi­dence of arson pre­sent­ed at tri­al. Abbott said evi­dence that was test­ed or offered into evi­dence pri­or to September 1, 2005 is beyond the scope of the FSC’s legal juris­dic­tion. In 2008,…

The Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to offer a new and more com­pre­hen­sive ver­sion of our Execution Database. The new data­base includes infor­ma­tion on the coun­ty where the crime was com­mit­ted and on the gen­der of vic­tim, in addi­tion to the infor­ma­tion avail­able in our pre­vi­ous data­base. The data­base includes such cat­e­gories as Race of Defendant and Victim, Foreign Nationals, Method of Execution, and Age at Execution. Moreover, results of search­es are sortable by each search cat­e­go­ry. This will allow, for exam­ple, all the exe­cu­tions in a par­tic­u­lar county…

Marcus Robinson will be the first North Carolina death row inmate to have a sen­tenc­ing chal­lenge heard in court based on the state’s 2009 Racial Justice Act. According to the act, a death row inmate who can estab­lish through sta­tis­ti­cal stud­ies that his sen­tence was racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry can seek to have it com­mut­ed to life in prison. Robinson’s lawyers plan to argue that he received a death sen­tence part­ly because he is black and his vic­tim was white They plan to cite sev­er­al North Carolina stud­ies, includ­ing one that found…

A recent edi­tion of The Angolite, the nation’s largest prison news mag­a­zine, con­tains an arti­cle detail­ing nation­al death penal­ty trends and devel­op­ments. The piece high­lights the emer­gence of sev­er­al promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tives who have voiced con­cerns with the cur­rent death penal­ty sys­tem, includ­ing Montana State Senator Roy Brown and con­ser­v­a­tive activist Richard Viguerie. The arti­cle is authored by John Corley and pro­vides an in-depth look at the ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy about lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures around the coun­try, the high costs of main­tain­ing the death penal­ty sys­tem, and the risks of wrong­ful exe­cu­tions.…