Studies

Items: 31 — 40


Mar 26, 2019

Researcher — Capital Sentencing Evidence Shows Death Penalty Race Bias is Real

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.…

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Mar 07, 2019

Study Reports More Than Three-Fold Drop in Pursuit of Death Penalty by Pennsylvania Prosecutors

A new study of four­teen years of Pennsylvania mur­der con­vic­tions has doc­u­ment­ed a sharp decline in coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors’ use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment across the Commonwealth. After exam­in­ing the court files of 4,184 mur­der con­vic­tions from 2004 to 2017, the Allentown Morning Call found that Pennsylvania pros­e­cu­tors sought the death penal­ty at more than triple the rate (3.3) at the start of the study peri­od than they did four­teen years lat­er — a drop of more than 70%. In 2004, the paper report­ed, pros­e­cu­tors sought the death penal­ty in 123 of…

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Jan 03, 2019

Study: International Data Shows Declining Murder Rates After Abolition of Death Penalty

Nations that abol­ish the death penal­ty then tend to see their mur­der rates decline, accord­ing to a December 2018 report by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, a Washington, DC-based orga­ni­za­tion that pro­motes human rights and democ­ra­cy in Iran. The report exam­ined mur­der rates in 11 coun­tries that have abol­ished cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, find­ing that ten of those coun­tries expe­ri­enced a decline in mur­der rates in the decade fol­low­ing abo­li­tion. Countries were includ­ed if they met the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria: they had for­mal­ly abol­ished the death penal­ty at least ten years ago, at least…

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Nov 16, 2018

DPIC Analysis: The Decline of the Death Penalty in Philadelphia

During his elec­tion cam­paign, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner described the eco­nom­ic waste­ful­ness of city pros­e­cu­tors’ pur­suit of the death penal­ty as light­ing mon­ey on fire.” A DPIC analy­sis of the out­comes of the more than 200 death sen­tences imposed in the city since 1978 (click here to enlarge image) and the last sev­en years of cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion out­comes pro­vides strong sup­port for Krasner’s claim.

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Oct 16, 2018

73% of North Carolina’s Death Row Sentenced Under Obsolete Laws, New Report Says

Most of the 142 pris­on­ers on North Carolinas death row were con­vict­ed under obso­lete and out­dat­ed death-penal­ty laws and would not have been sen­tenced to death if tried today, accord­ing to a new report by the Center for Death Penalty Litigation. The report by the Durham-based defense orga­ni­za­tion, titled Unequal Justice: How Obsolete Laws and Unfair Trials Created North Carolina’s Outsized Death Row, says that near­ly three-quar­ters of the pris­on­ers on the nation’s sixth-largest death row were tried and sen­tenced before the state enact­ed sig­nif­i­cant reforms in pros­e­cu­tion, defense, and…

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Sep 21, 2018

Judged for More Than Her Crime”: New Report Examines Worldwide Use of Death Penalty Against Women

Women face wide­spread dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices in the cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion and deten­tion” in death-penal­ty coun­tries around the world, accord­ing to a new report by the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. The report, Judged for More Than Her Crime: A Global Overview of Women Facing the Death Penalty—released at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland on September 18, 2018 — exam­ines the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment against women world­wide, includ­ing the crimes for which women are sen­tenced to death and the con­di­tions of imprisonment…

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Sep 20, 2018

DEATH-ROW CENSUS: Number of Prisoners Facing Active Death Sentences in U.S. Drops Below 2,500

For the first time in more than a quar­ter cen­tu­ry, few­er than 2,500 pris­on­ers across the United States now face active death sen­tences. According to the lat­est Death Row USA nation­al cen­sus by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), released in ear­ly September 2018, 2,743 peo­ple were on death rows in 32 states and the U.S. fed­er­al and mil­i­tary death rows on April 1, 2018. That total includes 249 peo­ple who were pre­vi­ous­ly sen­tenced to death but face the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing after a new tri­al or new…

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Aug 28, 2018

Amnesty International Issues Report on the Death Penalty in Florida

A new report by Amnesty International says Floridas approach to redress­ing the near­ly 400 uncon­sti­tu­tion­al non-unan­i­mous death sen­tences imposed in the state has deep­ened its sta­tus as an out­lier on death-penal­ty issues by add[ing] an extra lay­er of arbi­trari­ness to [the state’s] already dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and error-prone cap­i­tal jus­tice system.”

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