Studies

In June 2008, the Office of Defender Services of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts pub­lished a report ana­lyz­ing the cost, qual­i­ty and avail­abil­i­ty of defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion in fed­er­al death penal­ty cas­es. The report deter­mined that fed­er­al cap­i­tal tri­als in which the death penal­ty was sought were sub­stan­tial­ly more expen­sive than non-death penal­ty fed­er­al tri­als; how­ev­er, a death sen­tence was hand­ed down in only one-quar­ter of the cas­es. In addi­tion, defense…

According to the F.B.I.‘s lat­est crime report released on September 15, the South is the only region in the coun­try that expe­ri­enced a rise in its mur­der rate in 2007. The FBI report­ed that the mur­der rate in the coun­try declined to 5.6 mur­ders per 100,000 peo­ple in 2007 from 5.7 in 2006, and the rate declined in the Northeast, the Midwest, and the West. In the South, how­ev­er, the mur­der rate increased from 6.8 in 2006 to 7.0 in 2007, the high­est rate among the four regions. The…

A new study of the death penal­ty in Arkansas showed racial pat­terns in sen­tenc­ing. University of Iowa law pro­fes­sor David Baldus’ study exam­ined 124 mur­der cas­es filed in one dis­trict from 1990 to 2005. Even after adjust­ing for fac­tors such as the defendant’s crim­i­nal his­to­ry and cir­cum­stances of the crime, black peo­ple who killed white peo­ple were more like­ly than oth­ers to be charged with cap­i­tal mur­der and be sen­tenced to death. ​“It sug­gests to us that there’s a real risk that race may…

Maryland’s Commission on Capital Punishment con­tin­ued with its fourth pub­lic hear­ing on September 5 in Annapolis. Experts tes­ti­fied about the addi­tion­al costs of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment com­pared to life-sen­tence cas­es, the risk of arbi­trari­ness in death sen­tenc­ing, the valid­i­ty of recent deter­rence stud­ies, and the nation­al trends away from the use of the death penal­ty in the U.S. There was also dis­cus­sion about the num­ber of cur­rent cas­es that do not have any DNA evi­dence to con­firm or…

The Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment began hear­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from a wide vari­ety of wit­ness­es on issues relat­ed to the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem. After gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion regard­ing mat­ters such as pos­si­ble racial, geo­graph­ic and socioe­co­nom­ic dis­par­i­ties, on costs, and on the risks of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent, the 23-mem­ber Commission will offer rec­om­men­da­tions to the General Assembly to ensure that Maryland’s use of the death penal­ty is ​“free from bias and error” and achieves…

New research has called into ques­tion the reli­a­bil­i­ty of some use of DNA tests to defin­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fy sus­pects in crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions. After recent evi­dence of chro­mo­so­mal ​“match­es” based on DNA test­ing turned out to belong to unre­lat­ed indi­vid­u­als, some sci­en­tists won­der whether there are flaws in the assump­tions that under­lie the FBI’s sta­tis­ti­cal esti­mates of DNA accu­ra­cy. In 2001, Arizona state crime lab ana­lyst Kathryn Troyer was run­ning tests on the state’s data­base when…

The Justice Project has just released two pol­i­cy reviews relat­ed to DNA test­ing and the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The first, ​“Improving Access to Post-Conviction DNA Testing,” chron­i­cles the lessons to be learned from the case of Kirk Bloodsworth. Bloodsworth was sen­tenced to death in Maryland and spent almost nine years in prison for the rape and mur­der of nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton before DNA test­ing proved he did not com­mit the crime. The report con­tains the Justice Project’s…

A new study pub­lished in the American Journal of Political Science inves­ti­gates the con­nec­tion between death penal­ty deci­sions and the prac­tice of elect­ing judges. ​“The analy­sis pre­sent­ed con­sid­ers pub­lic opinion’s influ­ence on the com­po­si­tion of courts … and its influ­ence on judge votes in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment cas­es. In elec­tive state supreme courts, pub­lic sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment influ­ences the ide­o­log­i­cal com­po­si­tion of those courts and judge will­ing­ness to uphold death…