Studies

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has just released the 2005 ver­sion of its annu­al report on the death penal­ty in the U.S. The report notes that both the num­ber of death sen­tences and the size of death row were down for 2005, and that this rep­re­sents a trend over the past 5 years. The report states that there were 60 exe­cu­tions in 2005, all by lethal injec­tion, and that the time between sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion was longer in 2005 than in…

According to a new report from the FBI, the num­ber of police offi­cers killed in the line of duty declined in 2005 com­pared with 2004, and was 22% less than the num­ber killed in 2001. Fifty-five law enforce­ment offi­cers were felo­nious­ly killed in 2005, 57 in 2004, and 70 in 2001. The South had the largest num­ber of police offi­cers killed, almost three times more than any of the oth­er regions in the coun­try. Twenty-eight offi­cers were killed in the South, 10 in the Midwest, 10 in the West, and…

The Austin American-Statesman con­duct­ed an exten­sive study of the qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion that death row inmates receive in Texas. The study concluded…

The Common Sense Foundation of North Carolina released a study on October 11, 2006 that found that at least 37 peo­ple now on death row had tri­al lawyers who would not have met today’s min­i­mum stan­dards of qual­i­fi­ca­tion. Nearly a third of the cas­es where suf­fi­cient data was avail­able fell into this substandard…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s ​“Death Row USA” shows that the num­ber of peo­ple on the death row in the United States is con­tin­u­ing to decline, falling to 3,366 as of July 1, 2006. The size of death row increased every year between 1976 and 2000, but since then it has been in a slow…

The FBI recent­ly released the lat­est ver­sion of its Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the United States 2005. The report showed that the mur­der rate in 2005 (5.6 mur­ders per 100,000 peo­ple) was the same as in 2001, with lit­tle change in the inter­ven­ing years. Death sen­tences, exe­cu­tions and the size of death row all declined dur­ing this peri­od. As in pre­vi­ous years, the South had the high­erst mur­der rate, 6.6, among the 4 geo­graph­i­cal regions. Over 80% of the exe­cu­tions in the…

In an arti­cle enti­tled The Death Penalty: No Evidence for Deterrence, John Donnohue and Justin Wolfers exam­ined recent sta­tis­ti­cal stud­ies that claimed to show a deter­rent effect from the death penal­ty. The authors con­clude that the esti­mates claim­ing that the death penal­ty saves numer­ous lives ​“are sim­ply not cred­i­ble.” In fact, the authors state that using the same data and prop­er method­ol­o­gy could lead to the exact oppo­site con­clu­sion: that is, that the death penal­ty actually…

DPIC’s Lethal Injection Page ABA Report Finds Serious Problems in Florida’s Capital Punishment System A new report issued by the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project found that Florida’s appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty fails to com­ply with ABA stan­dards to ensure fair­ness and accu­ra­cy. This report was com­piled by an eight-mem­ber team com­posed of crim­i­nal jus­tice experts from Florida. The report cites prob­lems in numer­ous areas,…

An eight-mem­ber pan­el con­vened by the American Bar Association and con­sist­ing of pros­e­cu­tors, defense lawyers, and judges con­clud­ed a two-year study of Florida​’s death penal­ty sys­tem. The pan­el unan­i­mous­ly pro­posed exten­sive changes to improve the accu­ra­cy and fair­ness of the state’s sys­tem. ​“Despite the best efforts of many leg­is­la­tors, judges and lawyers, much more needs to be done to ensure that Florida’s death penal­ty sys­tem avoids exe­cut­ing the inno­cent,” said…