Studies

As states and coun­ties across the United States are using the death penal­ty with decreas­ing fre­quen­cy, a new report issued by the Fair Punishment Project on August 23 explores the out­lier prac­tices of 16 U.S. coun­ties that are buck­ing the nation­al trend and dis­pro­por­tion­al­ly pur­su­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. These juris­dic­tions, rep­re­sent­ing one-half of one per­cent of all U.S. coun­ties or coun­ty equiv­a­lents, are the only locales in the United States to have imposed five or more death sen­tences since 2010.

A new study of Nebraska’s death penal­ty found that the state spends $14.6 mil­lion per year to main­tain its cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. The study, The Economic Impact of the Death Penalty on the State of Nebraska: A Taxpayer Burden?, also esti­mates that each death penal­ty pros­e­cu­tion cost Nebraska’s tax­pay­ers about $1.5 mil­lion more than a life with­out parole pros­e­cu­tion. At a press con­fer­ence announc­ing the study, prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor Dr. Ernest Goss — an eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor at Creighton University and founder of the con­ser­v­a­tive think tank, Goss & Associates — pre­sent­ed the find­ings as a…

An ini­tia­tive on the California bal­lot this November billed by its sup­port­ers as a reform alter­na­tive to abol­ish­ing the state’s death penal­ty will cost the state tens of mil­lions of dol­lars to imple­ment, accord­ing to an analy­sis by the Alarcón Advocacy Center at Loyola Law School, and ​“will not speed up executions.”

The exe­cu­tion of John Conner on July 15 end­ed a two-month peri­od with­out exe­cu­tions in the United States, the longest such peri­od in the coun­try since 2007 – 2008. A range of state-spe­cif­ic issues have con­tributed to this stop­page, includ­ing ques­tions about the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of state death penal­ty prac­tices, prob­lems relat­ing to lethal injec­tion drugs and state exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols, and the fall­out from botched executions.

A court hear­ing is under way in the cap­i­tal tri­al of Donald Fell in a Vermont fed­er­al dis­trict court chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. This week, death penal­ty experts tes­ti­fied for the defense about sys­temic prob­lems Fell’s lawyers say may ren­der the fed­er­al death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Fell was sen­tenced to death in 2006, but was grant­ed a new tri­al because of juror mis­con­duct. The hear­ing began on July 11 and is sched­uled to con­tin­ue until July 22. Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford, who is pre­sid­ing over the hearing…

In a chap­ter from the recent­ly released American Bar Association pub­li­ca­tion, The State of Criminal Justice 2016, Ronald J. Tabak, chair of the Death Penalty Committee of the ABA’s Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, describes sig­nif­i­cant trends and recent cas­es relat­ed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Tabak high­lights the ongo­ing declines in death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions across the United States, as well as the increas­ing con­cen­tra­tion of the death penal­ty in a small num­ber of juris­dic­tions. The chap­ter details the lethal injec­tion con­tro­ver­sies that have slowed exe­cu­tions in many states and…

A new report by Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project has found that a small num­ber of overzeal­ous pros­e­cu­tors with high rates of mis­con­duct have a huge­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate impact on the death penal­ty in the United States. The report, America’s Top Five Deadliest Prosecutors: How Overzealous Personalities Drive the Death Penalty, shows that, by them­selves, these pros­e­cu­tors are respon­si­ble for more than 440 death sen­tences, the equiv­a­lent of 15% of the entire U.S. death row pop­u­la­tion today.

More than 80% of the 241 death sen­tences imposed in Louisiana since 1976 have been reversed on appeal, and one death row pris­on­er has been exon­er­at­ed for every three exe­cu­tions in the state, accord­ing to a new study by University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Professor Frank Baumgartner and sta­tis­ti­cian Tim Lyman. The study, to be pub­lished in the Southern University Law Center’s Journal of Race, Gender and Poverty, also reveals dra­mat­ic racial dis­par­i­ties in both the tri­al and appel­late stages of Louisiana death penal­ty proceedings.

Amnesty International report­ed that world­wide exe­cu­tions spiked by 54% to at least 1,634 — a 25-year high — in 2015, even as the num­ber of coun­tries abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty reached record levels.

A group of promi­nent Oklahomans have announced the cre­ation of a 12-mem­ber Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive review of the state’s death penal­ty. The all-vol­un­teer com­mis­sion will be led by three co-chairs, for­mer Governor Brad Henry (pic­tured), retired Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Reta Strubhar, and for­mer U.S. Magistrate Judge Andy Lester.