Studies

The Death Penalty Subcommittee of the Committee on Public Defense of the Washington State Bar has prepared a report on the state’s death penalty that will be submitted to the Bar Association’s Board of Governors in early 2007. The Subcommittee was formed to examine the costs of the state’s death penalty and to recommend whether the death penalty should be continued, given the expenses and the state’s experience in carrying out death sentences. The Death Penalty Subcommittee was made up of…

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 2004. California had the most death sentences (23) 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 5…

The Austin American-Statesman conducted an extensive study of the quality of representation that death row inmates receive in Texas. The study concluded that: Sheltered by an indifferent Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, lawyers appointed to handle appeals for death row inmates routinely bungle the job, submitting work that falls far below professional standards, frequently at taxpayer expense. Some appeals are incomplete, incomprehensible or improperly argued. Others are duplicated, poorly…

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 category. The study also lists the names of 16 people who have been executed whose trial lawyers did not meet these same standards. Over half of the executions in the state where data was…

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 decline. Nationally, the racial composition of those on death row is 45% white, 42% black, and 11% latino/latina. Of jurisdictions with more than 10 people on death row, Texas (69%) and…

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 country have…

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 increases the…

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, including: Innocence…