Studies

A recent study by Dr. Stephen Greenspan, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado, revealed that through­out American his­to­ry at least 106 indi­vid­u­als have been grant­ed posthu­mous par­dons, includ­ing 12 indi­vid­u­als who were exe­cut­ed. Although not all of the par­dons were grant­ed because of doubts about the defen­dan­t’s guilt, Dr. Greenspan found that in many instances the defen­dant was proven, or was very like­ly, not guilty and had…

A study recent­ly pub­lished in the jour­nal Criminology meau­red the effects of vic­tim impact evi­dence (VIE) on the like­li­hood of the jury return­ing a death sen­tence. The study was con­duct­ed by Professors Raymond Paternoster and Jerome Deise of the University of Maryland. It involved 135 par­tic­i­pants who watched a video record­ing of an actu­al cap­i­tal tri­al. Seventy-three par­tic­i­pants watched the full video, while the remaining…

A recent study by Professor Steven Shatz of the University of San Francisco Law School and Naomi Shatz of the New York Civil Liberties Union sug­gests that gen­der bias con­tin­ues to exist in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty, and that this bias has roots in the his­toric notion of chival­ry. In a review of 1,300 mur­der cas­es in California between 2003 and 2005, the authors found gen­der dis­par­i­ties with respect to both defen­dants and vic­tims in the underlying…

A recent study con­duct­ed by Professors Glenn Pierce and Michael Radelet pub­lished in the Lousiana Law Review showed that the odds of a death sen­tence in parts of Louisiana were 2.6 times high­er for those charged with killing a white vic­tim than for those charged with killing a black vic­tim. The study exam­ined 191 homi­cides in East Baton Rouge Parish between 1990 and 2008 involv­ing a charge of first-degree mur­der. Even after con­sid­er­ing oth­er vari­ables such as the…

A new study pub­lished in the Washington Law Review address­es the racial and geo­graph­i­cal dis­par­i­ties in the imple­men­ta­tion of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. The study, con­duct­ed by G. Ben Cohen, Counsel for the Capital Appeals Project in New Orleans, and Robert J. Smith, Counsel for the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, con­cludes that the dis­par­i­ties in the fed­er­al death penal­ty may exist because fed­er­al cas­es do not use a…

According to the lat­est fig­ures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Hispanics rep­re­sent a larg­er pro­por­tion of those on death row than in the past. Hispanics con­sti­tut­ed almost 20% of the new admis­sions to death row in 2009 (18 new inmates). Half of the new Hispanic death row inmates were from California, bring­ing their total to 157 Hispanic inmates, the most in the coun­try. Hispanics now rep­re­sent 13.5% of the U.S. death row pop­u­la­tion. In 2000, they made…

On December 22, attor­neys for John Green filed a brief with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ask­ing that a pre-tri­al hear­ing con­cern­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s death penal­ty be allowed to con­tin­ue. An ami­cus brief in sup­port of con­tin­u­ing the hear­ing was also filed by for­mer gov­er­nors, leg­is­la­tors, for­mer judges and pros­e­cu­tors, vic­tim fam­i­ly mem­bers and freed death row inmates, all of whom shared a con­cern over the risk of…