Studies

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recent­ly com­plet­ed a com­pre­hen­sive study of Georgia’s use of the death penal­ty and found that ​“get­ting the death penal­ty in Georgia is as pre­dictable as a light­ning strike.” This was the same prob­lem that the U.S. Supreme Court iden­ti­fied in 1972 when it over­turned Georgia’s law and the laws of every oth­er death penal­ty state. Among the paper’s find­ings, which appear in a four-part series that began on Sept. 23, 2007, were: • Of Georgia’s 132 most…

As Georgia law­mak­ers con­vene to review eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­ce­dures in the state, a new study by the Georgia Innocence Project has revealed that 83% of Georgia police agen­cies have no writ­ten rules on han­dling eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tions. Six men have been exon­er­at­ed in Georgia after DNA evi­dence proved their inno­cence and ​“every sin­gle one of those orig­i­nal con­vic­tions was based on faulty iden­ti­fi­ca­tions,” notes Representative Stephanie Stuckey Benfield, who chairs the study…

PBS Broadcasting will explore the prob­lem of inad­e­quate rep­re­se­n­a­tion in death penal­ty cas­es in ​“Death Is Different” on September 7^th as part of the inves­tiga­tive pro­gram EXPOSÉ. The show focus­es on Stephen Henderson’s (pic­tured) exam­i­na­tion of the qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in 80 death penal­ty cas­es in 4 states. Henderson, a McClatchy News reporter and author of an award-win­ning series enti­tled ​“No Defense: Shortcut to Death Row,” found that poor­ly-fund­ed defense lawyers are often failing…

A new study led by Vanderbilt University law pro­fes­sor Nancy King has revealed that few­er con­vic­tions have been over­turned since the 1996 enact­ment of the Anti-ter­ror­ism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). The 2‑year study was the first to exam­ine the effects of AEDPA. It exam­ined 2,400 non-cap­i­tal cas­es that were ran­dom­ly select­ed from among the more than 36,000 habeas cas­es filed in fed­er­al dis­trict court nation­wide by state pris­on­ers dur­ing 2003 and 2004, as well as more than 360…

A new study by law pro­fes­sors Eric Freedman of Hofstra and David Dow of the University of Houston found that, before the pas­sage of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act in1996, death row inmates who filed habeas cor­pus peti­tions in fed­er­al court suc­ceed­ed in over­turn­ing their con­vic­tions or death sen­tences about 40% of the time. After pas­sage of the 1996 law which restrict­ed the Courts’ pow­er to over­turn state deci­sions, the num­ber of suc­cess­ful appeals fell to just 12% between…

A new Ohio State University study has found that blacks con­vict­ed of killing whites are not only more like­ly than non-whites to receive a death sen­tence, but also more like­ly to be exe­cut­ed. Blacks on death row for killing non-whites are less like­ly to be exe­cut­ed than oth­ers on death row. ​“Examining who sur­vives on death row is impor­tant because less than 10% of those giv­en the death sen­tence ever get exe­cut­ed,” said David Jacobs (pic­tured), co-author of the study and pro­fes­sor of…

In con­tin­u­ing a series that DPIC had high­light­ed ear­li­er, the Denver Post has fea­tured more than a dozen news arti­cles and a series of online videos, pro­vid­ing an in-depth look at the han­dling of cru­cial bio­log­i­cal evi­dence gath­ered dur­ing crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions. ​“Trashing the Truth: The Hidden Story of Lost Evidence” exam­ined the nation­wide prob­lems with evi­dence stor­age, the destruc­tion of evi­dence, and the rela­tion­ship between miss­ing evi­dence and wrong­ful con­vic­tions. It also…

An updat­ed ver­sion of the ​“Espy File,” a data­base of exe­cu­tions in the United States and the ear­li­er colonies from 1608 to 2002, is now avail­able on DPIC’s Web site. This resource pro­vides detailed infor­ma­tion about each of the 15,269 exe­cu­tions record­ed dur­ing this peri­od and offers a unique glimpse into the his­to­ry of the death penal­ty in the U.S. For exam­ple, about 15% of those exe­cut­ed received the death penal­ty for crimes oth­er than mur­der, includ­ing 277 who were exe­cut­ed for…

A recent four-part series in the Denver Post about evi­dence in crim­i­nal cas­es detailed how police depart­ments across the U.S. store and dis­pose of cru­cial bio­log­i­cal evi­dence. The Post exam­ined 10 states in which author­i­ties destroyed bio­log­i­cal evi­dence in near­ly 6,000 rape and mur­der cas­es dur­ing the past decade. The inves­ti­ga­tion also revealed that over the past 30 years, destruc­tion of DNA evi­dence in 28 states has under­mined efforts by at least 141 pris­on­ers to prove their…

A new com­pre­hen­sive study of 200 inno­cence cas­es, all involv­ing peo­ple who were exon­er­at­ed by DNA evi­dence, found that erro­neous iden­ti­fi­ca­tion by eye­wit­ness­es, faulty foren­sic evi­dence, inac­cu­rate infor­mant tes­ti­mo­ny, and false con­fes­sions were the key prob­lems that led to these seri­ous mis­takes. The research — which includ­ed 14 death penal­ty cas­es — also found that courts per­formed mis­er­ably in iden­ti­fy­ing cas­es of inno­cence, and that those exon­er­at­ed were more like­ly to be members…