Arbitrariness
,Jul 26, 2019
The U.S. Supreme Court has said the death penalty must be reserved for the worst of the worst murders and be imposed only on the worst of the worst offenders. But what of an accomplice to a felony in which someone was killed but the accomplice nei…
Race
,Representation
,Sentencing Data
,Jun 19, 2019
A new study of the use of capital punishment in Los Angeles has concluded that, throughout the a…
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,New Voices
,May 18, 2022
Ignoring entreaties from judges, prosecutors, and state bar presidents, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals has denied a new trial to death-row prisoner Toforest Johnson. On May 6, 2022, the state appeal…
Arbitrariness
,Intellectual Disability
,Race
,Sep 13, 2022
An Alabama appeals court has upheld a fifth non-unanimous death sentence imposed on a death-row prisoner who has faced six capital sentencing trials for the same offense and was once found to be ineligible for the death penalty be…
Innocence
,Intellectual Disability
,Race
,Upcoming Executions
,Sep 14, 2020
Leaders in the Tennessee African-American community are urging Governor Bill Lee and the state and federal courts to halt the execution of a Black death-row prisoner who may be both innocent and intellectually di…
Arbitrariness
,Aug 21, 2017
Citing “relentless non-compliance” with court orders and “chronic obstructionism” by a prosecution team it says “has effectively compromised” Scott Dekraai’s rights to due process and a fair penalty trial, a California
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Sentencing Data
,Dec 22, 2017
The racially discriminatory jury selection practices of the Clark County, Nevada, District Attorney’s office are now causing it to lose convictions in capital cases. In a December 18 article, the prosecutorial watchdog, The Open F…
Arbitrariness
,Sentencing Data
,Dec 04, 2015
The counties in the United States that have the highest per capita rate of killings by police officers also rank among the highest in the country in the number of people sentenced to death. In his criminal justice blog, “The Watch,” for the Washin…
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Aug 12, 2016
Louisiana death row exoneree John Thompson (pictured, center), who was wrongly convicted of two different New Orleans murders as a result of prosecutorial misconduct, has filed a petition with the United States Department of Justi…
Innocence
,Intellectual Disability
,Race
,Jan 22, 2021
Lawyers for Tennessee death-row prisoner Pervis Payne say DNA testing in his 30-year-old case points to an “unknown male” and excludes Payne as the person who stabbed to death Charisse Christopher and her 2‑yea…
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Aug 26, 2022
A Death Penalty Information Center review of data from the National Registry of Exonerations has found that the pursuit or threatened use of the death penalty by police or prosecutors in nine different states led …
Public Opinion
,Executions Overview
,Federal Death Penalty
,Sep 03, 2020
At a time in which the United States as a whole and individual states and counties have continued their long-term movement away from the death penalty, the federal government’s current execution spree has established it as an outlier jurisdiction …
Costs
,Race
,Sentencing Data
,Nov 16, 2018
During his election campaign, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner described the economic wastefulness of city prosecutors’ pursuit of the death penalty as “lighting money on fire.” A DPIC analysis of the outcomes of the more than 200 deat…
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Sep 10, 2020
Eight years after his exoneration from death row, an Ohio trial court judge has declared that Joe D’Ambrosio (pictured) was “wrongfully imprisoned.” The August 31, 2020 ruling by Cuyahoga County C…
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Sep 01, 2016
In a primary election described as reshaping the political landscape of Northeast Florida, the region voted in a landslide Tuesday to oust State Attorney Angela Corey (pictured) and Public Defender Matt Shirk. The pair’s controver…
Representation
,Feb 11, 2021
Former Florida public defender Matt Shirk (pictured), who was defeated for re-election after scandals related to personal misconduct and undermining criminal defense services in one the nation’s most prolific deat…
Arbitrariness
,Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Nov 05, 2015
Oklahoma County has executed 41 prisoners since 197…
Costs
,Representation
,Mar 29, 2017
Maricopa County, Arizona County Attorney Bill Montgomery has sought the death penalty so frequently that the county has run up millions of dollars in defense costs and run out of defense lawyers qualified to handl…
Innocence
,Race
,Recent Legislative Activity
,Apr 14, 2021
The Nevada State Assembly has passed a bill that would abolish the state’s death penalty and resentence the prisoners currently on its death row to life without parole. It was the first time any death-penalty abolition bill had be…
Intellectual Disability
,Mental Illness
,Public Opinion
,Feb 03, 2022
Likely voters in Clark County, Nevada overwhelmingly oppose the use of capital punishment against broad categories of vulnerable and impaired persons whom county prosecutors have been trying to execute, a new poll…
Juveniles
,Mental Illness
,Public Opinion
,Sentencing Data
,Mar 02, 2018
Recently released poll results from two Florida counties that have heavily used the death penalty suggest that voters actually prefer life-sentencing options instead. Polls conducted by North Carolina-based Public Policy Po…
Arbitrariness
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Representation
,Aug 23, 2016
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…
Sentencing Data
,Executions Overview
,Dec 05, 2017
Harris County (Houston), Texas, has executed 126 prisoners since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas’s capital punishment statute in 1976, more than any other county in the United States and, apart from the rest o…
Executions Overview
,Feb 18, 2022
When Oklahoma executed Gilbert Postelle on February 17, 2022, it came with a dubious distinction. The intellectually impaired man who was 18 years old at the time of his offense became the 44th person …
Innocence
,Mental Illness
,Executions Overview
,Jul 06, 2022
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has set execution dates for 25 of the state’s 43 death-row prisoners, scheduling nearly an execution a month from August 2022 through December 2024. If carried out, the execution schedule, un…
Arbitrariness
,Mental Illness
,Lethal Injection
,Jan 27, 2022
Oklahoma carried out the first execution of 2022 in the U.S. on January 27, injecting Donald Grant (pictured, at his clemency hearing) with a three-drug chemical cocktail whose constitutionality is the subject of …
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Aug 10, 2020
After 12 years as Orleans Parish, Louisiana District Attorney, Leon Cannizzaro (pictured) has announced that he will not seek re-election and will be retiring as D.A. at the end of this term. Cann…
Innocence
,Race
,Nov 11, 2016
Change may be in the offing in Hillsborough County, Florida after voters ousted incumbent State Attorney Mark Ober on November 8 and replaced him with a reform candidate, Andrew Warren (pictured). Hillsborough ranks among t…
Innocence
,New Voices
,Nov 15, 2016
Jefferson County, Alabama is among both the 2% of counties that account for more than half of all executions in the U.S. and are responsible for more tha…
Race
,New Voices
,Dec 02, 2016
With 55 executions since the 1970s, Dallas County, Texas, ranks second among all U.S. counties — behind only Harris County (Houston), Texas — in the number of prisoners it has put to death. It is also among the
Arbitrariness
,Murder Rates
,Feb 28, 2018
With 24 prisoners currently condemned to die, Hamilton County — home to Cincinnati — has the largest death row of any county in Ohio, despite a smaller population and a lower murder rate than other pa…
Arbitrariness
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Representation
,Aug 26, 2016
Between 2010 and 2015, only 16 counties in the United States imposed five or more death sentences. Duval County, Florida, which consistently ranks among the most punitive death sentencing counties in the country, sentenced 25 capi…
Arbitrariness
,Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Representation
,Oct 20, 2016
Harris County, Texas, the county that leads the nation in executions, has served as a bellwether in recent years of the nationwide decline of the death penalty. Although the 10 new death sentences imposed in Harris County since 20…
Arbitrariness
,Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Representation
,Sep 16, 2016
Judicial override of jury recommendations of life, the imposition of death sentences after non-unanimous jury sentencing recommendations, and prosecutorial misconduct, race bias, and ineffective defense counsel have made Mobile County, Ala…
Arbitrariness
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Representation
,Oct 11, 2016
Kern County, California — one of five Southern California counties that have been described as the “new Death Belt” — sent six people to death row between 2006 a…
Arbitrariness
,Innocence
,Intellectual Disability
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Sep 23, 2016
The death-sentencing rate per homicide in Caddo Parish, Louisiana was nearly 8 times greater between 2006 and 2015 than the rest of the state, making a paris…
Arbitrariness
,Race
,Representation
,Sentencing Data
,Nov 21, 2016
Los Angeles County, California is the home of the nation’s largest death row, one that statistics show continues to rapidly grow. In January 2013, Los Angeles was responsible for more death row prisoners than any …
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Sep 02, 2016
Maricopa County, Arizona imposed 28 death sentences between 2010 and 2015 and, as described in a BuzzFeed news analysis of a new report on outlier death penalty practices, “stands out for its stark exampl…
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Apr 06, 2020
Ohio death-row prisoner Melvin Bonnell (pictured) has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to vacate his conviction and death sentence after his lawyers discovered physical evidence from his case that Cuyahoga Co…
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Representation
,Dec 12, 2016
Miami-Dade County has historically been a significant contributor to Florida’s death row and large proportions of its recent death sentences raise serious constitutional questions about the practices that result i…
Arbitrariness
,Intellectual Disability
,Mental Illness
,Race
,Representation
,Sentencing Data
,Nov 07, 2016
Pinellas County, Florida ranks among the 2% of counties responsible for more than half of all prisoners on death rows a…
Costs
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Representation
,Sep 08, 2016
The geographic arbitrariness, high rates of official misconduct, racial discrimination, and poor defense representation characteristic of outlier jurisdictions that disproportionately seek and impose the death penalty in the United States are all …
Arbitrariness
,Race
,Sep 17, 2021
An African-American man sentenced to death in Hamilton County, Ohio in 1999 for the murder of a white man is seeking to overturn his conviction and death sentence based on evidence from a recently published study …
Arbitrariness
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Dec 28, 2016
Orange County, California imposed nine death sentences between 2010 and 2015, more than 99.8% of American counties, and ranking it among the 6 most prolific death-sentencing counties in the country during that period. Over …
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Race
,Representation
,Oct 03, 2016
Riverside County, California imposed more death sentences than any other county in the United States in 2015, accounting for more than half of the state’s new death sentences and 16% of new death sentences imposed nationwide. Amon…
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Representation
,Oct 31, 2016
San Bernardino County, California is one of five Southern California counties that have produced more death sentences since 2010 than 99.5% of all U.S. counties. Along with its neighbors,
Public Opinion
,May 26, 2020
Just 20% of Houstonians — a record low — now support the death penalty over life-sentencing alternatives, a new Rice University survey has found. The 2020 Houston Area Survey by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research, released on May 4, 2020, fou…
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Jul 17, 2017
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 Recidi…
Intellectual Disability
,Mental Illness
,Jan 12, 2017
Nearly two-thirds of death row prisoners in five Florida counties whose cases were studied by Harvard University’s Fair Punishment Project suffer from serious mental impairments. According to a report released by the project on Ja…
Innocence
,Intellectual Disability
,Aug 09, 2022
Tennessee voters have issued a stunning rebuke to controversial Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich (pictured), ousting her from office after an eleven-year tenure marred by charges of racism and m…
Arbitrariness
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Sentencing Data
,Sep 10, 2015
Riverside County, California is “the buckle of a new Death Belt,” says Professor Robert J. Smith of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, producing 7 death sentences in the first half of 2015. This, Smith says, is “more…
Arbitrariness
,Race
,Aug 18, 2015
A new study of trials in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, revealed that potential jurors who were black were much more likely to be struck from juries than non-blacks. The results we…
Sentencing Data
,Apr 02, 2018
Multiple factors — from declining murder rates to the abandonment of capital punishment by many rural counties and substantially reduced usage in outlier counties that had aggressively imposed it in the past — have collectively led to an “astonishing …
