Studies

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…

The New School in New York City is spon­sor­ing a research con­fer­ence enti­tled ​“Punishment: The U.S. Record” to be held November 30 and December 1, 2006. The con­fer­ence will cov­er all aspects of impris­on­ment and pun­ish­ment in the U.S., but some speak­ers will focus on the death penal­ty. In par­tic­u­lar, John Donohue III will exam­ine recent deter­rence stud­ies and David Garland will dis­cuss the func­tion that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment serves in soci­ety. Other speak­ers at the conference include…

According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics Report released on September 10, vio­lent crime in the United States decreased slight­ly in 2005, con­tin­u­ing a decade-long trend in few­er vic­tim­iza­tions. Comparing two-year peri­ods, vio­lent crime was low­est in the Northeast region of the coun­try in 2004-05, and that region also expe­ri­enced the largest decrease in vio­lent crime from 2002-03 to 2004-05. Since 1993, vio­lent crime has decreased by about 58% in the U.S. The BJS sur­vey of crime…

According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics study released September 6, more than half of all prison and jail inmates, includ­ing 56% of state pris­on­ers, 45% of fed­er­al pris­on­ers, and 64% of local jail inmates have men­tal health prob­lems. The study was based on report­ing of symp­toms by inmates rather than through med­ical diag­no­sis. Among state pris­on­ers with men­tal prob­lems, 43% had symp­toms of mania, 23% had major depres­sion, and 15% had psy­chot­ic dis­or­ders. Having mental health…

A new study on the use of the death penal­ty in Trinidad and Tobago has been pub­lished by Roger Hood and Florence Seemungal. The authors close­ly exam­ine pros­e­cu­tions under the coun­try’s manda­to­ry death penal­ty statute, which requires impo­si­tion of a death sen­tence when­ev­er a defen­dant is found guilty of mur­der. The study found that, despite a high num­ber of killings, rel­a­tive­ly few peo­ple were con­vict­ed of mur­der, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those who com­mit­ted the most heinous crimes.The authors note…

A sym­po­sium enti­tled ​“The Next Generation of Death Penalty Research: Priorities, Strategies, and an Agenda” will be spon­sored by the Capital Punishment Research Initiative of the State University of New York in Albany on October 6 & 7, 2006. Speakers will explore con­tem­po­rary death penal­ty laws and prac­tices, and the role of empir­i­cal research in chang­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment poli­cies. Included in an exten­sive list of impres­sive speak­ers are: David Baldus of the University of Iowa…

Citing the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a United Nations pan­el rec­om­mend­ed that the United States impose a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. The report, issued on July 28 by the U.N. Human Rights Committee, stat­ed the pan­el was ​“con­cerned by stud­ies accord­ing to which the death penal­ty may be imposed dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly on eth­nic minori­ties as well as on low-income groups, a prob­lem which does not seem to be ful­ly acknowl­edged.” The pan­el, made up of 18…

An arti­cle in the July Scientific American exam­ines the extent to which the tele­vi­sion pro­gram ​“C.S.I.” and sim­i­lar foren­si­cal­ly-focused pro­grams have increased the expec­ta­tions of jurors in crim­i­nal tri­als. The arti­cle quotes University of California, Irvine, researchers Simon Cole and Rachel Dioso ques­tion­ing the real impact of such pro­grams: ​“That tele­vi­sion might have an effect on court­rooms is not implau­si­ble… but to argue that ​‘C.S.I.’ and sim­i­lar shows are actu­al­ly raising the…

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice has unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ed that state law­mak­ers require elec­tron­ic record­ing of all jail­house inter­ro­ga­tions. The com­mis­sion added that the law should include a pro­vi­sion stat­ing that if an offi­cer fails to record an inter­ro­ga­tion, jurors would be instruct­ed to view the defen­dan­t’s state­ment with cau­tion. Emphasizing that false con­fes­sions have been iden­ti­fied as the sec­ond most fre­quent cause of wrongful…

A recent RAND Corporation study of the fed­er­al death penal­ty from 1995 to 2000 found no evi­dence of racial bias. Even though the inves­ti­ga­tors found that the death penal­ty was more often sought against defen­dants who mur­dered white vic­tims, researchers ulti­mate­ly con­clud­ed that the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the crime, and not the racial char­ac­ter­is­tics of the vic­tim or the defen­dant, could be used to make accu­rate pre­dic­tions of whether fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors would seek the death penal­ty. The RAND…