Studies

UN Report Shows Declining Use of the Death Penalty Worldwide A report from the Secretary-General to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations on the sta­tus of the death penal­ty world­wide shows a declin­ing use of capital…

A new study from the Texas Defender Service calls for sub­stan­tial changes in the way Texas han­dles cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es. The report rec­om­mends that Texas imple­ment a series of reforms, includ­ing uni­form inves­ti­ga­tion pro­ce­dures, a life-with­out-parole sen­tenc­ing option, and a statewide pub­lic defend­er’s office. Drawing from rec­om­men­da­tions made by the blue-rib­bon Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment that was estab­lished to address wrong­ful con­vic­tions in that state, the Texas Defender…

An inde­pen­dent audit of Virginia’s cen­tral crime lab­o­ra­to­ry ini­ti­at­ed by the present gov­er­nor found that the lab had botched DNA tests in the death penal­ty case of Earl Washington (pic­tured). The find­ing prompt­ed Gov. Mark Warner to order a review of 150 oth­er crim­i­nal cas­es and the devel­op­ment of pro­ce­dures to insu­late the lab from out­side polit­i­cal pres­sures. The audit was con­duct­ed by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors. It found that the Virginia lab’s inter­nal review…

In a com­pre­hen­sive study cov­er­ing 20 years and thou­sands of cap­i­tal cas­es in Ohio, the Associated Press found that the death penal­ty has been applied in an uneven and often arbi­trary fash­ion. Among the con­clu­sions of the study that ana­lyzed 1,936 indict­ments report­ed to the Ohio Supreme Court by coun­ties with cap­i­tal cas­es from October 1981 through 2002…

In the most com­pre­hen­sive exam­i­na­tion of a statute in the his­to­ry of the New York State Legislature, state law­mak­ers released a report high­light­ing the tes­ti­mo­ny of 170 wit­ness­es at five statewide hear­ings on the state’s death penal­ty law. The report, issued by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver along with the Chairs of the Committees on Codes, the Judiciary and Correction, is a thor­ough exam­i­na­tion of the statute and its troubled…

A two-year study of 11 wrong­ful con­vic­tion cas­es in Virginia found that mis­tak­en eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is the major rea­son inno­cent peo­ple have been con­vict­ed in the state. The report’s rec­om­men­da­tions note that Virginia could dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduce the num­ber of wrong­ful con­vic­tions through a series of reforms, such as chang­ing a vari­ety of police pro­ce­dures, relax­ing the state’s 21-day rule to allow evi­dence of inno­cence to be con­sid­ered beyond this time restric­tion, ensur­ing that…

According to state and fed­er­al records obtained by The Los Angeles Times, main­tain­ing the California death penal­ty sys­tem costs tax­pay­ers more than $114 mil­lion a year beyond the cost of sim­ply keep­ing the con­victs locked up for life. This fig­ure does not count the mil­lions more spent on court costs to pros­e­cute cap­i­tal cas­es. The Times con­clud­ed that Californians and fed­er­al tax­pay­ers have paid more than a quar­ter of a bil­lion dol­lars for each of the state’s 11 exe­cu­tions, and that it costs…

Dr. Jeffrey Fagan, a pro­fes­sor at Columbia University Law School and a lead­ing nation­al expert on deter­rence, tes­tifed that recent stud­ies claim­ing to show a deter­rent effect to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment are fraught with tech­ni­cal and con­cep­tu­al errors. Fagan not­ed that a string of recent stud­ies pur­port­ing to show that the death penal­ty can pre­vent mur­ders use inap­pro­pri­ate meth­ods of sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis, fail to con­sid­er all the rel­e­vant fac­tors that dri­ve mur­der rates, and do not consider…