Studies

The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) recent­ly com­plet­ed a study of the effect of exe­cu­tions on homi­cide rates and found that both states that exe­cute many peo­ple and states that exe­cute no one show the biggest decline in homi­cides (34% and 36% declines, respec­tive­ly). States that exe­cute few peo­ple have the least decline (24%) in homi­cides. According to the study, ​“This pecu­liar result sug­gests the death penal­ty is irrel­e­vant to homi­cide.” The study looked at the effect…

A forth­com­ing study to be pub­lished in the Fordham Urban Law Journal found that almost all states that use a par­a­lyz­ing drug in the lethal injec­tion of death row inmates for­bid the use of this same drug in euth­a­niz­ing ani­mals. Ty Alper, the asso­ciate direc­tor of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, con­duct­ed the research that found that 42 states do not approve neu­ro­mus­cu­lar block­ing agents in the ordi­nary euthana­sia of animals.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California has released two reports on California’s death penal­ty deal­ing with the high costs and arbi­trari­ness of the sys­tem. The report on costs, ​“The Hidden Death Tax,” found that a cap­i­tal tri­al costs coun­ties at least $1.1 mil­lion more than a non-cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al, and that the state spends an addi­tion­al $117 mil­lion a year pur­su­ing the exe­cu­tion of those already on death row. One tri­al alone cost California $10.9 million.

On March 28, two let­ters were sent to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice–one from mem­bers of the law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty and the oth­er from judges, rais­ing con­cerns about the state’s death penal­ty. Thirty law enforce­ment offi­cers, includ­ing cur­rent and for­mer pros­e­cu­tors, police chiefs and oth­er offi­cers, signed a let­ter stat­ing that ​“California’s death penal­ty is bro­ken.” The let­ter cites mul­ti­ple rea­sons why the state’s death…

On March 24, Maryland law­mak­ers vot­ed to cre­ate a com­mis­sion to study the state’s death penal­ty. The House vot­ed 89 – 48 and the Senate by 32 – 15 to estab­lish the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment to research racial, socio-eco­nom­i­cal, and geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty as well as eval­u­ate the risk of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son. The com­mis­sion will con­sid­er the costs of the death penal­ty as com­pared to a sen­tence of life with­out parole. Its findings and…

A recent Arizona Legal Studies paper on mur­der cas­es in Missouri found both geo­graph­i­cal and racial dis­par­i­ties in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty. ​“Life and Death Decisions: Prosecutorial Discretion and Capital Punishment in Missouri,” by Katherine Barnes of Arizona University Law School, and David Sloss and Stephen Thaman of St. Louis Univeristy Law School, stud­ied 1046 cas­es of inten­tion­al homi­cide in Missouri to deter­mine geo­graph­i­cal and racial effects in the rates at which…

The Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to announce the intro­duc­tion of a new Web page on Native Americans and the death penal­ty. The page con­tains infor­ma­tion on the use of the death penal­ty against Native Americans and includes the results of an exten­sive his­tor­i­cal study con­duct­ed by David V. Baker. His research was recent­ly pub­lished in the December 2007 edi­tion of Criminal Justice Studies, and is the first of its kind. Baker report­ed 464 exe­cu­tions of Native Americans…

Study Reveals Maryland’s Death Penalty is Costing Taxpayers $186 MillionA study released on March 6, 2008 found that Maryland tax­pay­ers are pay­ing $186 mil­lion dol­lars for a sys­tem that has result­ed in five exe­cu­tions since 1978 when the state reen­act­ed the death penal­ty. That would be equiv­a­lent to $37.2 per exe­cu­tion. The study, pre­pared by the Urban Institute, esti­mates that the aver­age cost to Maryland tax­pay­ers for reach­ing a sin­gle death sen­tence is $3 mil­lion — $1.9…

Connecticut Superior Court Judge Stanley T. Fuger ruled on February 27 that a suit alleg­ing racial and geo­graph­ic bias in the state’s death penal­ty should not be dis­missed. Judge Fuger is allow­ing the claim from sev­en death row inmates to con­tin­ue because the state’s con­sti­tu­tion gives defen­dants greater legal rights than the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court had reject­ed a sim­i­lar claim about Georgia’s death penal­ty in 1987 based on fed­er­al con­sti­tu­tion­al grounds. In his rul­ing on a…

Victor Streib, who has been research­ing the sub­ject of women and the death penal­ty for 20 years, has released an updat­ed ver­sion of his report ​“Death Penalty for Female Offenders.” In his research, Prof. Streib, a pro­fes­sor at Elon University School of Law in North Carolina and Ohio Northern University’s Pettit College of Law, has found that women are sig­nif­i­cant­ly less like­ly than men to receive a death sen­tence, pos­si­bly because pros­e­cu­tors seem less inclined to seek the…