Studies

Eighty-eight per­cent of the country’s top crim­i­nol­o­gists do not believe the death penal­ty acts as a deter­rent to homi­cide, accord­ing to a new study pub­lished on June 16 in the Northwestern University School of Law’s Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. The study was authored by Professor Michael Radelet, Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and grad­u­ate stu­dent Traci Lacock. Their arti­cle, ​“Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates? The Views…

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 The arti­cle was pub­lished before New Mexico repealed the death penal­ty in March 2009, and served as valu­able infor­ma­tion dur­ing the leg­isla­tive debate.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…