Entries tagged with “Articles of Interest

Research

Sep 05, 2024

Research Roundup: Revisiting David Baldus’s Study to Examine Modern Day Use of the Death Penalty

DPI’s new series focus­es on aca­d­e­m­ic research and arti­cles in the field of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. This month’s arti­cle is​“Sacred Victims: Fifty Years of Data on Victim Race and Sex as Predictors of Execution,” in The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, co-authored by Professors Scott Phillips (Department of Sociology & Criminology), Justin Marceau, Sam Kamin, and a J.D. pro­gram alum­na, Nicole King, from the Sturm College of Law at the…

Research

Jul 12, 2024

Articles of Interest: Op-ed says new Tennessee law that expands the death penal­ty to child rape cre­ates more prob­lems than it solves.”

A July 7, 2024 op-ed in the Tennessean argues that the recent enac­tion of SB 1834, which makes the rape of a child pun­ish­able by death,​“does more harm than good.” Sarah McGee (pic­tured), coor­di­na­tor for Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, explains that dur­ing her work as a vic­­tim-wit­­ness coor­di­na­tor for Davidson County District Attorney’s Office, pro­ba­tion offi­cer, and assis­tant pub­lic defend­er, she learned that when child ser­vice providers and…

Executions

Apr 23, 2024

Articles of Interest: Reprieve Issues New Report on Botched Executions and Racial Disparities

A new report issued April 17, 2024 by the UK-based inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tion Reprieve found racial dis­par­i­ties in the occur­rence of botched exe­cu­tions in the United States. As report­ed in The Guardian, Reprieve ana­lyzed all lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions between 1976 and 2023. It chron­i­cled 73 con­firmed botched pro­ce­dures and found that 8% of exe­cu­tions of Black peo­ple were botched (37 times out of 465 exe­cu­tions), com­pared with 4% for white peo­ple (28