Studies
Items: 51 — 60
Apr 26, 2018
DPIC Study Shows 97% of Prisoners Who Overturn Pennsylvania Death Sentences Are Not Resentenced to Death
In Pennsylvania, death-row prisoners whose convictions or death sentences are overturned in state or federal post-conviction appeals are almost never resentenced to death, a new Death Penalty Information Center study has revealed. Since Pennsylvania adopted its current death-penalty statute in September 1978, post-conviction courts have reversed prisoners’ capital convictions or death sentences in 170 cases. Defendants have faced capital retrials or resentencings in 137 of those cases, and 133 times — in more than 97% of the cases — they received non-capital dispositions ranging from life without parole to exoneration. Only four prisoners whose…
Read MoreApr 12, 2018
Amnesty International Report: Death Penalty Use Down Worldwide in 2017
Use of the death penalty declined worldwide in 2017, according to the Amnesty International’s annual global report on capital punishment.
Read MoreMar 12, 2018
Global Study Highlights Systemic Risks of Wrongful Capital Convictions
“In 2016, at least 60 prisoners were exonerated after having been condemned to death, in countries across the geographical and political spectrum,” according to a new report on wrongful capital convictions by the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. The report, Justice Denied: A Global Study of Wrongful Death Row Convictions, analyzes risk factors for executing the innocent that are endemic in death penalty cases irrespective of where they are tried, and makes recommendations for systemic reform. The sixty exonerations in just one year “represent[ ] only a tiny…
Read MoreDec 12, 2017
Report: Deterrence is Based on Certainty of Apprehension, Not Severity of Punishment
The certainty of apprehension, not the severity of punishment, is more effective as a deterrent. So argues Daniel S. Nagin (pictured), one of the nation’s foremost scholars on deterrence and criminal justice policy, in his chapter on Deterrence in the recently released Academy for Justice four-volume study, Reforming Criminal Justice. Reviewing deterrence scholarship since the 1960s and five leading studies from the past two decades, Dr. Nagin concludes that evidence supporting a deterrent effect from “the certainty of punishment is far more convincing and consistent than for the severity of…
Read MoreSep 12, 2017
NEW PODCAST: DPIC Study Finds No Evidence that Death Penalty Deters Murder or Protects Police
A Death Penalty Information Center analysis of U.S. murder data from 1987 through 2015 has found no evidence that the death penalty deters murder or protects police. Instead, the evidence shows that murder rates, including murders of police officers, are consistently higher in death-penalty states than in states that have abolished the death penalty. And far from experiencing increases in murder rates or open season on law enforcement, the data show that states that have abolished the death penalty since 2000 have the lowest rates of police officers murdered in…
Read MoreAug 01, 2017
NEW RESOURCES: Capital Punishment and the State of Criminal Justice 2017
The American Bar Association has released a new publication, The State of Criminal Justice 2017, an annual report examining major issues, trends, and significant changes in America’s criminal justice system. In a chapter devoted to capital punishment, Ronald J. Tabak, chair of the Death Penalty Committee of the ABA’s Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, describes significant death penalty cases and developments over the past year. Tabak reports on historic declines in new death sentences and in executions in the U.S.: new death sentences were at their lowest level since…
Read MoreJul 17, 2017
Report Finds High Levels of Misconduct in Four Top Death Sentencing Counties
Four counties that rank among the most aggressive users of capital punishment in the United States have prolonged patterns of prosecutorial misconduct, according to a new report by the Harvard-based Fair Punishment Project. The report, “The Recidivists: Four Prosecutors Who Repeatedly Violate the Constitution,” examined state appellate court decisions in California, Louisiana, Missouri, and Tennessee from 2010 – 2015, and found that prosecutors in Orange County, CA; Orleans Parish, LA; St. Louis City, MO; and Shelby County, TN—all of which currently face allegations of significant misconduct — ranked among the most prolific perpetrators of…
Read MoreJul 03, 2017
Equal Justice Initiative Report on Lynchings Outside the Deep South Suggests Links to Capital Punishment
Lynching has long been regarded as a regional phenomenon, but in an updated edition of its landmark 2015 report “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,” the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) has now documented more than 300 lynchings of African Americans in states outside the Deep South. “Racial terror lynching was a national problem,” said EJI Director Bryan Stevenson (pictured). More than six million African American migrants fled “as refugees and exiles from terror in the American South,” but the racial terror often followed them. “Hundreds of lynchings…
Read MoreMay 19, 2017
STUDY: Juries Have Never Found Anyone Intellectually Disabled Under Georgia’s Insurmountable Standard of Proof
No death penalty jury has ever found a defendant charged with intentional murder to be ineligible for the death penalty under Georgia’s intellectual disability law, according to a new empirical study published in Georgia State University Law Review.
Read MoreMay 10, 2017
New Statistical Brief from the Bureau of Justice Statistics Documents U.S. Death Penalty Decline
The nation’s death rows are shrinking more rapidly than new defendants are being sentenced to death, according to a new Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) statistical brief, “Capital Punishment, 2014 – 2015.” The statistical brief, which analyzes information on those under sentence of death in the United States as of December 31, 2014 and December 31, 2015, documents a continuing decline in executions, new death sentences, and death row populations across the U.S. 2015 marked the fifteenth consecutive annual decrease in the number of prisoners under sentence of death in the U.S.…
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