Testimony and Statements

Tokyo, JapanDecember 6 – 7, 2005Next we would like to wel­come, Mr. Richard Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center.I would like to thank the European Commission, the American Bar Association and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations for invit­ing me to speak about the death penal­ty in the United States. I first want to say that our Japanese hosts have been espe­cial­ly gra­cious – I imme­di­ate­ly felt wel­comed here, and I want to thank you for that.Today we are address­ing the cul­tur­al aspects of the death penal­ty, and the United States…

As the 1,000^th exe­cu­tion approach­es, over 1,000 reli­gious lead­ers from more than a dozen reli­gious faiths have issued an open let­ter call­ing for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States. The let­ter reaf­firms the lead­ers’ moral oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty and reit­er­ates the groups’ belief in the sacred­ness of life and the human capac­i­ty for change. The faith lead­ers called on pub­lic offi­cials to reex­am­ine cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and to seek bet­ter ways to help com­mu­ni­ties heal from vio­lence. The let­ter states:

A state­ment approved dur­ing this week’s meet­ing of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) calls for an end to the death penal­ty in the United States and notes that the death penal­ty ​“con­tributes to a cycle of vio­lence in our soci­ety that must be bro­ken.” The state­ment, draft­ed by the USCCB Domestic Policy Committee, is the first com­pre­hen­sive state­ment focused on the death penal­ty by the Catholic bish­ops of the United States in 25 years. It is part of the wider ​“Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the…

In tes­ti­mo­ny before the Massachusetts Joint Committee on the Judiciary regard­ing pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to ini­ti­ate a ​“fool­proof” death penal­ty, Columbia Law School Professor Jeffrey Fagan (pic­tured) ana­lyzed recent stud­ies that claimed that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment deters mur­ders. He stat­ed that the stud­ies ​“fall apart under close scruti­ny.” Fagan not­ed that the stud­ies are fraught with tech­ni­cal and con­cep­tu­al errors, includ­ing inap­pro­pri­ate meth­ods of sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis, fail­ures to con­sid­er all rel­e­vant fac­tors that dri­ve mur­der rates, miss­ing data on key vari­ables in key states, weak to non-exis­tent tests of con­cur­rent effects of…

The ded­i­ca­tion of the National Death Penalty Archive at the State University of New York at Albany will take place on August 9, 2005. Hugo Bedau of Tufts University will keynote the pro­gram, which will also fea­ture William J. Bowers, Scott Christianson, David Kaczynski, and Michael Radelet. The Archive is a part­ner­ship between the Capital Punishment Research Initiative at the School of Criminal Justice and the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives at the University of Albany Libraries. This col­lec­tion of his­tor­i­cal mate­ri­als is an excel­lent resource for…

Deterrence and the Death Penalty: A Critical Review of New Evidence con­tains the tes­ti­mo­ny of Professor Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia University Law School that he deliv­ered to the New York State Assembly’s Standing Committees on Codes, Judiciary, and Correction on January 25, 2005. Read the tes­ti­mo­ny in PDF Format (145k)

DPIC has added a new easy-to-use state data­base of death penal­ty infor­ma­tion to its Web site. In addi­tion, Richard Dieter’s (DPIC’s Executive Director) tes­ti­mo­ny before the New York State Assembly Standing Committees on Codes, Judiciary, and Correction regard­ing the costs of the death penal­ty is also avail­able. The Committees are hold­ing hear­ings on whether New York should re-instate the death penal­ty. To access infor­ma­tion on any state’s death row pop­u­la­tion, the num­ber of exon­er­a­tions, exe­cu­tions, or clemen­cies, and to learn facts about the state’s his­to­ry of the death penal­ty, and…

Opinion; San Francisco Chronicle, January 15, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Brenda Bowser Tuesday, December 14, 2004 (202) 293‑6970, cell (301) 906 – 4460bbowser@​deathpenaltyinfo.​orgDEATH PENALTY NUMBERS IN 2004 CONTINUE DRAMATIC FIVE-YEAR DECLINEDPIC’s Year End Report Highlights Drops in Death Sentences, Executions, Death Row Population, and Public Support for Capital PunishmentWASHINGTON, DC – A five-year decline in death sen­tences, a 40% drop in exe­cu­tions, a shrink­ing death row pop­u­la­tion, and wan­ing pub­lic sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have marked a sig­nif­i­cant turn around in the use of the death penal­ty, accord­ing to the Death Penalty Information Center’s (DPIC) 2004 Year End…