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News Commentary Archive from 2011
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- An Intolerable Burden of Proof
An editorial in the New York Times criticized a recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, upholding the heavy burden Georgia places on offenders with intellectual disabilities. In order to be exempt from the death penalty, defendants must prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that they are mentally retarded. (12/12/11, DPIC Update)
- Oregon's Death Penalty Halt Merciful and Right
Kitzhaber is right to say that the capital process is fatally flawed. It is unfair to some defendants, yes. But a system that tries many, condemns some to die and executes few is also cruel and unusual to those who work within the process. It is primarily inflicting pain on victims' relatives who wait in limbo, on jurors who relive those discussions, on prosecutors whose hearts are hardened while their efforts are frustrated and on the budgets and reputations of the states that choose to go on with it anyway.
(11/25/11, CNN.com. News commentary by Mark Osler.)
- Former Head of FBI and Texas Governor Call for Delay in Texas Execution
William Sessions, the former Director of the FBI, and Mark White, former Governor of Texas, called on Texas to delay the November 9 execution of Hank Skinner and allow access to untested DNA evidence. Skinner, who has always maintained his innocence, has repeatedly petitioned for testing of several items from the crime scene that contain DNA.
... Read full op-ed. (11/7/11, DPIC Update)
- The Death Penalty's De Facto Abolition
A new Gallup poll reports that support for the death penalty is at its lowest level since 1972. In fact, though, the decline, from a high of 80 percent in 1994 to 61 percent now, masks both Americans' ambivalence about capital punishment and the country's de facto abolition of the penalty in most places. When Gallup gave people a choice a year ago between sentencing a murderer to death or life without parole, an option in each of the 34 states that have the death penalty, only 49 percent chose capital punishment. That striking difference suggests that more Americans are recognizing that killing a prisoner is not the only way to make sure he is never released, that the death penalty cannot be made to comply with the Constitution and that it is in every way indefensible. But there are other numbers that tell a more compelling story about the national discomfort with executions. ...Opposition to capital punishment has built from the ground up. It is evident in the greater part of America's counties where people realize that, in addition to being barbaric, capricious and prohibitively expensive, the death penalty does not reflect their values. (10/14/11, Editorial by the New York Times)
- Abolish the Death Penalty
Today, Georgia plans to execute an inmate named Marcus Ray Johnson. Later in the month, Alabama plans to execute Christopher T. Johnson, and Texas plans to execute Frank Garcia. Three more people are scheduled to die by the hand of the state next month. More than 3,000 people sit on death row in America, including three in Colorado. ... Since 1973, more than 130 inmates have been released from death row in the United States after they were found to be innocent. There is no way to tell how many people have been executed for crimes they did not commit, but common sense says such miscarriages of justice have surely occurred, and anti-death penalty organizations have documented several almost certain wrongful executions since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter this year granted a posthumous pardon to Joe Arridy, who was executed in Colorado in 1939 but who is now assumed to have been innocent of the murder he was convicted of. ... Capital punishment, of course, raises a moral question, but one does not need to settle it to arrive at the conclusion that it should be abolished. The death penalty is wrong because it doesn't work. (10/10/11, Editorial by the Canon City Daily Record)
- "Minority Practice, Majority's Burden: The Death Penalty Today"
A new report by Professor James S. Liebman (pictured) and Peter Clarke from Columbia University Law School analyzes the declining use of the death penalty and concludes that, although it is abstractly supported by two-thirds of the public, the death penalty is actually practiced by only a distinct minority of jurisdictions in the United States.
(8/29/11, DPIC Update)
- Four With Family Murders Speak About Death Penalty
Kathryn Gaines, Rita Shoulders, Ruth Lowe and Victoria Cox all had someone in their family murdered but all believe that a death sentence for the killers would only deepen their personal wounds. Shoulders lost her sister to murder; Cox lost her brother; Lowe also lost her brother; and Gaines experienced the death of her eldest grandchild a year ago. ... Ruth Lowe said of the man who killed her brother, "I'm learning to forgive. And even if I had the chance I wouldn't want him executed. It would do nothing for me; it would do nothing for the rest of my family. To take his life would make no sense." Kathryn Gaines said, "You cannot bring a life back by taking away another life. It hurts a whole family." The videos of the four women's stories can be found here. The women's stories are also being told in a series of articles in The Record, a Catholic newspaper published in central Kentucky. (8/15/11, DPIC Update)
- The Death Penalty and the Costs of An Obesssion
The unseemly love affair some American politicians have with the death penalty is bad for justice and bad for our country's standing in the world. It inflicts a wholly unnecessary moral stain on a nation that rightly preaches the rule of law to everyone else. (7/14/11, Chicago Tribune. Commentary by E.J. Dionne.)
- DPIC Releases New Report as 35th Anniversary of Reinstatement of the Death Penalty Approaches
The Death Penalty Information Center has released a new report, "Struck by Lightning: The Continuing Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty Thirty-Five Years After Its Reinstatement in 1976." The report shows that despite the changes to sentencing schemes approved by the U.S. Supreme Court on July 2, 1976, race, geography, money and other factors continue to make the implementation of the death penalty arbitrary and unfair. (6/27/11, DPIC Update)
- Two Cases of Probable Innocence Illustrate Need for Better System of Review
Attorneys for a murder defendant who may be innocent have called for reforms in the system of federal review, and particularly to the "accumulated barriers to habeas corpus review of claims of factual innocence." Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project, along with attorneys for Dr. Jeffrey R. MacDonald in North Carolina, pointed to the mounting evidence of MacDonald's possible innocence that was dismissed by the federal courts until DNA evidence finally became available ... When the DNA test results were finally available, the 4th Circuit, in an abrupt turnaround, derided the piecemeal approach previously taken to one evidentiary discovery after another and instructed the district court this time to review 'the evidence as a whole' and apply 'a fresh analysis.' (5/23/11, DPIC Update)
- Why Law Enforcement Supports Abolishing the Death Penalty
the truth is, at least among law enforcement executives nationally, that this entrenched support for capital punishment does not exist. ... There is an entire body of research that shows there is no correlation between officer safety and implementation of a death penalty statute. It is therefore dishonest for the political rhetoric to promote the notion that law enforcement want or need the death penalty for their safety. (4/23/11, NewsTimes.com)
- 48 Hours Mystery: Grave Injustice
Convicted of murder and sentenced to death ... 16 years later, students help set him free. Richard Schlesinger reports. (4/16/11, CBS News.com)
- Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States
A new book, "Queer (In)Justice" by Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock, explores the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in America's criminal justice system, and particularly their interaction with the death penalty system. The authors assert that prosecutors have used defendants' sexual orientation or gender-nonconforming appearance to obtain capital convictions.
(4/18/11, DPIC Update)
- Victims' Families React Negatively to Serving as Basis for Death Penalty
A recent study by Professors Thomas Mowen and Ryan Schroeder of the University of Louisville found that public support for the death penalty has shifted away from traditional justifications (such as its purported deterrent effect, its imagined cost-saving value, and its safeguard of innocent lives), and has been replaced by rationales of retribution and closure on behalf of victims' families.
... "This has resulted in the onus of capital punishment being placed on the victim's family." The study found that this change of justifications for the death penalty has produced a backlash against it. (4/11/11, DPIC Update)
- Second Thoughts of a "Hanging Judge"
I presided over 10 murder cases in which I sentenced the convicted men to die. As a result, I became known as "the hanging judge of Orange County," an appellation that, I will confess, I accepted with some pride. ... It's time to stop playing the killing game. Let's use the hundreds of millions of dollars we'll save to protect some of those essential services now threatened with death. Let's stop asking people like me to lie to those victim's family members.
(3/25/11, Los Angeles Times. Op-Ed by Donald A. McCartin.)
- Ten Things to Abolish the Death Penalty
What can we do to build on the success in Illinois? We can get involved by joining abolitionist groups, signing petitions and contacting our elected officials. But, as Gov. Quinn did, we must also listen to those who have grappled with this system firsthand: former prisoners, death row lawyers, prisoners' family members, activists and victims of violent crime.
(3/21/11, The Nation. Commentary by Walter Mosley, with Research by Rae Gomes.)
- The Conservative Argument to Abolish the Death Penalty
In a recent op-ed in the Chicago Tribune following Illinois's abolition of the death penalty, author and attorney Scott Turow (pictured) outlined three major conservative reasons for opposing capital punishment: it is a failed government program, it is a waste of money, and it doesn't fit with the idea of limited government. Turow served on former Governor George Ryan's Commission on Capital Punishment, which found numerous problems with the state's death penalty.
(3/21/11, DPIC Update)
- Editorial: Make Colorado Next to End Death Penalty
Illinois last week became the 16th state in the union to end capital punishment. Colorado should become the 17th. Unfortunately, there's no effort afoot in Colorado's statehouse to end our unfortunate and long run with the death penalty. ... The Denver Post has long opposed the death penalty. We believe that death is an ineffective sentence for a society that should value life. (3/13/11, Editorial by the Denver Post)
- Illinois Death Penalty Repeal Called a "Victory for Justice"
An editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times applauded Illinois Governor Pat Quinn for signing the bill abolishing the death penalty. The editors wrote, "We've learned that the system makes too many mistakes to entrust it with the ultimate power of capital punishment. We've learned that legal safeguards can be pushed aside when emotions are high after a heinous crime. We've learned that political ambition sometimes blinds those in power to the weaknesses of a case. We've learned that evidence can disappear or be misrepresented, that witnesses seeking special deals may lie, that juries may be swayed by emotion instead of facts."
(3/14/11, DPIC Update)
- Chicago Tribune Urges Governor to Sign Death Penalty Repeal Bill
A recent editorial in the Chicago Tribune urged Gov. Pat Quinn to sign the bill to end the death penalty in Illinois.
(3/7/11, DPIC Update)
- New Film Explores Risk of Wrongful Convictions in Capital Cases
"Slick" shows the fallibility of investigations and human judgment, as well as the complicated nature of capital cases.
(2/28/11, DPIC Update)
- Criminal Justice Coalition Releases "Smart on Crime" Report
A diverse coalition of the nation's leading criminal justice reform organizations recently released Smart on Crime: Recommendations for the Administration and Congress.
(2/21/11, DPIC Update)
- Death Penalty "Inherently Inhumane"
A recent editorial in the Baltimore Sun urged Gov. Martin O'Malley to work toward repealing the death penalty in Maryland. ... But it was the fundamental unfairness and high costs of the death penalty that underscored the paper's position: "Countless studies have shown that the death penalty is no more effective in deterring crime than a sentence of life without parole ... As an instrument of justice, it is a moral abomination that can never be rendered humane expect by ending it altogether."
(2/14/11, DPIC Update)
- National Papers Raise Concerns About Lethal Injection
Recent editorials in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times called into question the current use of lethal injection in executions, in light of the decision by the sole U.S. manufacturer of a key drug used by almost all states to stop its production. Hospira Inc. was the only U.S. producer of sodium thiopental, the main anesthetic used in lethal injections, but the company said international concerns about the death penalty prompted its halt. (2/7/11, DPIC Update)
- Illinois Police Chief Calls for End to State's Death Penalty
Police Chief Charles A. Gruber of St. Charles, Illinois, a 40-year veteran of law enforcement, recently stated that "the death penalty does nothing to keep us safe," and should be abolished.
(1/24/11, DPIC Update)
- Outgoing Governor Urges State Legislators to Review Death Penalty
In one of his final acts as governor, Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell wrote a letter to the state General Assembly urging legislators to consider replacing the death penalty with a sentence of life without parole if it cannot be made more effective than it has been. (1/24/11, DPIC Update)
- Victims' Families Need Services More Than the Death Penalty
In a recent article in the Peoria Journal Star, Jennifer Bishop Jenkins and Kathleen Bishop Becker, both of whom had family members murdered, called on Illinois's state legislature to end the death penalty as a better way of helping victims.
(1/10/11, DPIC Update)
- It's Time for the Death Penalty to Become Texas History
The death penalty in Texas is fraught with demonstrable error, and the people of the state seem more willing to deal with that fact than their leaders. Events of the past year have convinced us that defendants have been executed on the basis of invalid evidence. ... Besides, we already have the ultimate safeguard on the books: the sentence of life without parole. Spending the rest of one's days in prison is as terrifying a deterrent to most people as quick execution. By ending state-sanctioned killing, in the future when a jury makes a mistake, resurrection won't be required to remedy it. (1/1/11, Editorial by the Houston Chronicle)
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