Studies

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund has released the lat­est Death Row U.S.A. report, cov­er­ing death penal­ty sta­tis­tics through January 1, 2009. The total num­ber of death row inmates decreased from 3,309 a year ear­li­er to 3,297. The states with the largest num­ber of death row inmates were California with 678, Florida with 402, and Texas with 358. The states (with 10 or more inmates) with the high­est per­cent of minori­ties on death row were Texas at…

Amnesty International has released a new report enti­tled, ​“Too much cru­el­ty, too lit­tle clemen­cy: Texas nears 200^th exe­cu­tion under cur­rent gov­er­nor.” It exam­ines many of the near­ly 200 exe­cu­tions that have occurred dur­ing Governor Rick Perry’s term in office, as well as a few cas­es where exe­cu­tions are immi­nent. The orga­ni­za­tion states that the Governor is not sole­ly respon­si­ble for the fate of those on death row, but notes that Perry has ​“rarely exercised…

According to the lat­est edi­tion of Death Row U.S.A. pub­lished by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), the size of death row decreased slight­ly as of July 1, 2008 com­pared to Jan. 1. After increas­ing steadi­ly for about 25 years, the death row pop­u­la­tion start­ed decreas­ing in 2000. The cur­rent total of defen­dants on state and fed­er­al death rows is 3,307, of whom 45% are white, 41.6% are black, and 11% are Latino/​Latina. Over 98% of those on death…

A study by attor­ney Marcia Wilson was recent­ly pub­lished in the New Mexico Law Review: ​“The Application of the Death Penalty in New Mexico, July 1979 through December 2007: An Empirical Analysis.” Wilson’s research reveals new infor­ma­tion on how the death penal­ty was applied in New Mexico after its rein­state­ment. The arti­cle was pub­lished before New Mexico repealed the death penal­ty in March 2009, and served as valu­able infor­ma­tion dur­ing the leg­isla­tive debate. Wilson…

A ground­break­ing study by Brandon Garrett and Peter Neufeld pub­lished in the Virginia Law Review explores erro­neous sci­en­tif­ic tes­ti­mo­ny by pros­e­cu­tion experts in the tri­als of defen­dants who were lat­er exon­er­at­ed through DNA test­ing. The research, ​“Invalid Forensic Science Testimony and Wrongful Convictions,” explored sero­log­i­cal analy­sis and micro­scop­ic hair com­par­i­son, bite mark evi­dence, shoe prints, soil, fiber, fin­ger­print com­par­isons, and DNA test­ing. In 60% of the…

An update of a study by the ACLU of Northern California on the costs of the death penal­ty found addi­tion­al expens­es due to a net increase in the size of death row. The analy­sis found, ​“The 11 new addi­tions to death row add almost $1 mil­lion to the annu­al cost of hous­ing peo­ple on death row, now total­ing $61.2 mil­lion more each year than the cost of hous­ing in the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. … The recent­ly approved state bud­get also includes $136 mil­lion in funds…