Studies

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 con­di­tions in which pris­on­ers on Texas’ death row are con­fined are ​“harsh and inhu­mane,” vio­late inter­na­tion­al human rights norms, and amount to ​“a severe and relent­less act of tor­ture,” accord­ing to a new study by the University of Texas School of Law Human Rights…

After spend­ing more than a year study­ing Oklahoma​’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment prac­tices, the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission has unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ed that the state extend its cur­rent mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions ​“until sig­nif­i­cant reforms are accom­plished.” The bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion issued its report on April 25, 2017, reach­ing what it char­ac­ter­ized as ​“dis­turb­ing” find­ings that ​“led Commission mem­bers to ques­tion whether the death penal­ty can be…

A new study of the case records of the men and women exe­cut­ed in the United States between 2000 and 2015 has found that 21^st-cen­tu­ry exe­cu­tions dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly involve pris­on­ers diag­nosed with men­tal ill­ness and who have expe­ri­enced trau­mat­ic child…

A study pub­lished in The Yale Law Journal pro­vides new evi­dence that, as pub­lic opin­ion con­tin­ues to shift away from the death penal­ty, juries empan­eled in cap­i­tal cas­es may become even less rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the com­mu­ni­ty and even more prone to con­vict. The study—con­duct­ed by Professors Brandon Garrett (University of Virginia), Daniel Krauss (Claremont-McKenna College), and Nicholas Scurich (University of California Irvine) — found that with increased pub­lic oppo­si­tion to the…

Companion reports released on March 7 by the National Registry of Exonerations found record num­bers of exon­er­a­tions and wrong­ful con­vic­tions involv­ing offi­cial mis­con­duct in 2016, and strik­ing evi­dence of racial bias both in the wrong­ful con­vic­tions them­selves and in the time it took the judi­cial process to exon­er­ate the wrong­ful­ly incar­cer­at­ed. The Registry’s report, Exonerations in 2016, found a record 166 exon­er­a­tions in 2016, with 54 defen­dants exon­er­at­ed of…

A new study reports that at least 201 Florida death row pris­on­ers — includ­ing at least 134 whom judges sen­tenced to death after juries had returned non-unan­i­mous sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tions — may be eli­gi­ble for resen­tenc­ing hear­ings as a result of recent rul­ings by the United States and Florida Supreme Courts declar­ing the state’s death sen­tenc­ing practices…

Most of the pris­on­ers on Oregon​’s death row suf­fer from sig­nif­i­cant men­tal impair­ments, accord­ing a study released on December 20, 2016 by the Fair Punishment Project at Harvard University. The Project’s analy­sis of case records, media reports, and opin­ions of Oregon legal experts found that two-thirds of the 35 peo­ple on the state’s death row ​“pos­sess signs of seri­ous men­tal ill­ness or intel­lec­tu­al impair­ment, endured dev­as­tat­ing­ly severe child­hood trauma,…

A new study by Lewis & Clark Law School and Seattle University that exam­ined the costs of hun­dreds of aggra­vat­ed mur­der and mur­der cas­es in Oregon has con­clud­ed that ​“main­tain­ing the death penal­ty incurs a sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial bur­den on Oregon tax­pay­ers.” The researchers found that the aver­age tri­al and incar­cer­a­tion costs of an Oregon mur­der case that results in a death penal­ty are almost dou­ble those in a mur­der case that results in a sen­tence of life impris­on­ment or a…

The death penal­ty adverse­ly affects both fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims and fam­i­lies of the accused, accord­ing to two recent jour­nal arti­cles. In his Psychology Today blog, Talking About Trauma, psy­chol­o­gist Dr. Robert T. Muller (pic­tured) reports that psy­cho­log­i­cal stud­ies have have found that the death penal­ty pro­duces neg­a­tive effects on fam­i­lies and friends of mur­der vic­tims (referred to as…