Studies

Official mis­con­duct and per­jury or false accu­sa­tion con­tin­ue to be the main rea­sons inno­cent men and women are wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed in America, accord­ing to the 2019 annu­al report by the National Registry of Exonerations. That mis­con­duct, the report indi­cates, is most preva­lent in cas­es involv­ing the most seri­ous crim­i­nal charges.

Courts are fail­ing bad­ly in keep­ing junk psy­cho­log­i­cal sci­ence out of the court­room in crim­i­nal cas­es, per­mit­ting the admis­sion of psy­cho­log­i­cal tests that have nev­er been reviewed for reli­a­bil­i­ty and oth­ers that have been found unre­li­able, a recent study reports. Among the prob­lem­at­ic tests, anoth­er group of psy­chol­o­gists write, is a ​“psy­chopa­thy check­list” com­mon­ly used by pros­e­cu­tors to argue that a defen­dant pos­es a future dan­ger to soci­ety and should be sen­tenced to death.

Capital sen­tenc­ing schemes that per­mit judges to impose a death sen­tence despite the votes of one or more jurors for life cre­ate a height­ened risk that an inno­cent per­son will be wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death, accord­ing to a new Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis of death-row exon­er­a­tion data.

Nine years after an American Bar Association (ABA) study iden­ti­fied sys­temic defi­cien­cies in Kentucky’s admin­is­tra­tion of its death-penal­ty laws, a new report by past and cur­rent Kentucky pub­lic defend­ers charges that the Commonwealth’s fail­ure to take any mean­ing­ful reme­di­al action under­mines the legit­i­ma­cy of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state.

Families who have a loved one on death row, or who have expe­ri­enced the exe­cu­tion of a loved one, suf­fer a vari­ety of adverse men­tal health effects, includ­ing depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), accord­ing to a new report by the Texas After Violence Project (TAVP). The report, Nobody to Talk to, describes the men­tal health chal­lenges faced by fam­i­ly mem­bers of death row pris­on­ers and the spe­cial dif­fi­cul­ties those fam­i­ly mem­bers expe­ri­ence in seek­ing men­tal health care that address­es their situation.

Defendants con­vict­ed of killing white vic­tims in Georgia are 17 times more like­ly to be exe­cut­ed than those con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing black vic­tims, a new study by researchers at the University of Denver has found, and the prob­lem of dis­crim­i­na­tion is wors­ened by the appeal process.

Citing race dis­par­i­ties, inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion by court-appoint­ed lawyers, and arbi­trary case out­comes, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to strike down the state’s death penal­ty. In a brief filed on July 15, 2019 in the con­sol­i­dat­ed appeals of Philadelphia death-row pris­on­er Jermont Cox and Northumberland County​’s Kevin Marinelli, the District Attorney’s office argued that Pennsylvania’s death penal­ty ​“has repeat­ed­ly been hand­ed out in an unre­li­able and arbi­trary man­ner” and urged the court to rule ​“that the death penal­ty, as it has been applied, vio­lates the…

Proponents of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have long argued for the death penal­ty on the grounds that it brings clo­sure to fam­i­ly mem­bers of homi­cide vic­tims. But sci­ence sug­gests that achiev­ing clo­sure through exe­cu­tion may be a myth, says fam­i­ly and child ther­a­pist Linda Lewis Griffith (pic­tured) in a May 6, 2019 col­umn in the San Luis Obispo Tribune, and that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment may actu­al­ly make mat­ters worse.

A new study of Louisiana​’s death penal­ty reports that the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem costs tax­pay­ers at least $15.6 mil­lion a year more than a sys­tem with life with­out parole as the max­i­mum sen­tence. The study by retired New Orleans dis­trict Chief Judge Calvin Johnson (pic­tured, left) and Loyola Law Professor William Quigley (pic­tured, right), released on May 2, 2019, found that Louisiana has spent more than $200 mil­lion on its death-penal­ty sys­tem in the last 15 years, result­ing in a sin­gle exe­cu­tion of a pris­on­er who gave up his…

For decades, stud­ies have shown per­sis­tent racial dis­par­i­ties in the admin­is­tra­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Saying ​“death sen­tences are uneven­ly and unfair­ly applied based on race,” California Governor Gavin Newsom on March 13, 2019 imposed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the state with the nation’s largest death row. Responding to the governor’s mora­to­ri­um In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Stanford psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Jennifer Eberhardt—one of the lead­ing researchers on social sci­ence and race — says race dis­crim­i­na­tion in the death penal­ty ​“is real” and that the research sup­ports the governor’s claim.…