The StandDown Texas Project

Nebraska Repeal Bill on the Legislative Floor Today

You can watch the floor debate on Sen. Ernie Chambers' bill to repeal Nebraska's death penalty via NET, Nebraska's PBS and NPR stations.

The Omaha World-Herald reports, "New faces may turn tide on capital punishment," by Paul Hammel.

The most ardent supporter of capital punishment has left the Nebraska Legislature.

The harshest critic is back.

And some newly elected state senators oppose the death penalty, unlike the folks they replaced.

As lawmakers gird for an emotional debate Monday on a death penalty bill, supporters voice hopes that a repeal could happen this year. They say some unlikely conservatives may join their cause due to the higher legal and emotional costs of prosecuting such cases.

“This may be the first time in a long time that we have enough senators to repeal it,” said State Sen. Sara Howard of Omaha, who was elected in November.

“I'm optimistic, in a freshman way,” she said.

That might be overly optimistic.

Gov. Dave Heineman still supports the death penalty and would likely veto any move to repeal it.

And a leading proponent of capital punishment, Sen. Scott Lautenbaugh of Omaha, indicated Friday he would likely mount a filibuster to thwart any repeal attempt.

Halting a filibuster requires a supermajority of senators, 33 of the 49 lawmakers, a high bar even for less emotional issues.

“I'll do whatever it takes to stop it,” Lautenbaugh said.

That death penalty opponents envision a majority of senators, 25, will support an end to capital punishment represents a dramatic shift at the State Capitol. The last time capital punishment came to a formal vote, in 2009, only 13 senators voted in support of repeal.

But things have changed since then.

"Report: Death penalty is costly, inefficient," is by Kevin O'Hanlon for the Lincoln Journal Star.

As Nebraska lawmakers prepare to debate whether to abolish the death penalty, a new report says the state has spent an exorbitant amount of time and money on capital punishment -- with few results.

"The average delay for appeals more than doubles for death sentences: 13.3 years versus 5.8 years for life sentences," attorney and longtime death penalty opponent Alan Peterson said in a report given to lawmakers Friday. "The number of appeals for death cases averages 7.76, and the number of appeals for life sentences averages only 1.64 filings."

And:

Lawmakers will begin debate Monday on a bill (LB543) by Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha to change the death penalty to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Chambers, the most ardent death penalty opponent in the Legislature, was re-elected to his North Omaha seat in November after sitting out four years because of term limits. Each year from 1973 to 2008, he introduced a bill to abolish the death penalty. In 1979, his bill passed but was vetoed by then-Gov. Charles Thone.

Last week, Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland signed a law making that state the sixth in as many years to abolish the death penalty and the 18th overall to abandon capital punishment.

And some observers sense this could be the year Nebraska lawmakers follow suit.

NTV posts, "Senators to Debate Ending Death Penalty," by Steve White.

Political interest runs high Monday, as Nebraska law makers debate life and death -- and whether or not to end the death penalty, and instead give killers life in prison without parole.

The proposal from Sen. Ernie Chambers is nothing new, in fact, he has introduced similar legislation every year he's been in office for decades.

But many of those proposals failed to get out of committee. This proposal surprised many when it advanced from committee on a 7-0 vote.

Sen. Les Seiler of Hastings voted to advance the bill. Sen. Mark Christensen of Imperial did not vote, a sign he opposes the measure to do away with the death penalty.

The bill has the support of Catholics and Methodists plus Nebraskans for Peace and the ACLU.

In addition, a number of conservative lawmakers have shown support for the measure.

"Lawmakers prepare to debate LB 543," is the KHAS-TV report by Lauren Conley.

Nebraska is one of 32 states that have the death penalty.

Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers has fought this for years.

Chambers introduced LB 543 back in March. The bill would eliminate the death penalty in the state, life in prison would be the alternate charge.

Lawmakers are set to debate the bill Monday.

Today's Lincoln Journal Star publishes the OpEd, "Why I support repeal of death penalty," by Sen Colby Coash.

My stance on the use of the death penalty has gone through changes. I found it easy to have a pro-death penalty stance until faced with the option of having a voice in the policy.

Before my policymaking role, I had never given much consideration to the matter. It seemed reasonable. It felt right to be on the side of justice for the victim. An "eye for an eye" had a nice ring to it. The phrase appealed to my sense of justice.

That sense of justice, however, changed when I began to meet the relatives of actual victims.

More than my experiences as a senator, however, one event changed my heart, mind and my outlook on capital punishment. On Sept. 3, 1994, as a college freshman, I took a short trip to the Nebraska Penitentiary to bear witness in the parking lot of the execution of Willie Otey.

I can only describe what I saw there as ugly.

Earlier coverage of the Nebraska repeal legislation begins at the link.

Additional Coverage of the AI Annual Report

The Washington Post WorldViews blog posts, "An eye-opening map of which countries execute the most prisoners," by Caitlin Dewey.

Amnesty International’s latest report on capital punishment indicates that the world still executed roughly the same number of people, from roughly the same number of countries, as it did in 2011.

New in 2012, though, is a dramatic doubling of executions in Iraq and reversals of long-standing death penalty moratoriums in countries such as Japan and India.

First, the numbers: Twenty-one countries carried out executions in 2012, the same as 2011. Those countries — of which China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. are the biggest offenders — executed at least 682 people, or two more than in 2011. That’s not including China, which is thought to execute far more prisoners than any other country. Some 58 countries also imposed 1,722 death sentences – just the sentence, not the actual execution – versus 63 countries and 1,923 sentences the year before.

To put those numbers in context, they’re all down from a decade ago, when more than 30 countries carried out executions. But in the short term, it’s hard to see a global trend in either direction — the number of executions and imposed sentences have both swung unpredictably, especially since 2005.

Earlier coverage of the 2012 Amnesty report is at the link.

Amnesty International Issues Annual Death Sentences & Executions Report

The AI report, Death Sentences and Executions 2012, is at the link; a news release is also available.

The New York Times reports, "Amnesty International Reports on Death Penalty Trends," by Rick Gladstone.

At least four countries that had not used the death penalty in some time — India, Japan, Pakistan and Gambia — resumed doing so last year, the rights organization Amnesty International says in its annual compilation of capital punishment trends.

Amnesty, the London-based group that has made abolition of the death penalty one of its signature causes, also says the number of executions in Iraq nearly doubled in 2012 compared with a year earlier, which it characterized as “an alarming escalation.”

Nonetheless, its yearly review, released early Wednesday in London, said the overall shift away from death sentences and executions continued in 2012.

“In many parts of the world, executions are becoming a thing of the past, ” Salil Shetty, secretary general of the organization, said in a statement. Amnesty said only 21 countries were recorded as having carried out executions in 2012, the same as in 2011, but down from 28 countries a decade earlier.

"Amnesty: Progress in ending global death penalty," is the AP filing, via the Boston Herald.

Iraq executed almost twice as many people last year compared to the year before, while India and Pakistan resumed executions after abandoning the practice for years, global human rights group Amnesty International said Tuesday.

China still led the top five countries carrying out executions, the organization said, followed by Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Despite setbacks in several countries, the group said it was encouraged by overall signs of progress in the global trend toward ending the death penalty. In the U.S., nine states carried out executions in 2012, compared to 13 in the previous year.

"The 2012 figures on the use of the death penalty confirm that the overall trend globally is towards abolition: Only one in 10 countries worldwide carried out death sentences," the report said.

"Report: China, U.S. in top 5 for executions worldwide," is by Laura Smith-Spark at CNN.

China, the United States and three Middle Eastern nations carried out the most executions last year, rights group Amnesty International said Wednesday, but a global trend toward ending the death penalty persisted.

There were at least 682 confirmed executions worldwide last year, two more than in 2011, according to the group.

China is believed to have executed several thousand people last year, Amnesty said, but government secrecy makes it impossible to confirm exact numbers.

"The lack of reliable data does not allow Amnesty International to publish credible figures for the use of the death penalty in the country," the rights group said. "However, available information strongly indicates that China carries out more executions than the rest of the world put together."

Iran carried out at least 314 executions last year, Iraq at least 129 and Saudi Arabia at least 79. In the United States, 43 people were executed across nine states. Sixth on the list was Yemen, with at least 28 executions.

And:

According to the 60-page report, "Death Sentences and Executions in 2012," there were at least 1,722 newly-imposed death sentences in 58 countries last year, compared with 1,923 in 63 countries in 2011.

This meant that at least 23,386 people were under sentence of death worldwide at the end of 2012, it said.

AFP posts, "Execution-free world getting closer: Amnesty."

A total of 21 countries were recorded as carrying out executions in 2012 -- the same number as in 2011, but a sharp drop from 28 countries in 2003.

In 2012, at least 682 executions were known to have been carried out worldwide, two more than in 2011. At least 1,722 newly imposed death sentences in 58 countries could be confirmed, compared to 1,923 in 63 countries the year before.

But Amnesty stressed that its figures do not include the thousands of executions that it believes were carried out in China, where details are shrouded in secrecy.

And:

The United States remains the only country in the Americas to carry out executions -- the total number, 43, was the same as in 2011, but only nine states executed in 2012, compared to 13 in 2011. Connecticut became the 17th abolitionist state in April, while a referendum on the abolition of the death penalty was narrowly defeated in California in November.

"Amnesty International report claims death penalty is declining worldwide," by Saeed Kamali Dehghan for the Guardian.

In 2012, only 21 countries were known to have carried out executions, the same as the year before. More than two-thirds of the world's countries –140 – are classified as nations that have either abandoned the death penalty or are no longer implementing it.

Amnesty's Salil Shetty writes, "Time to drop 'high-cost revenge'," at CNN.  Here's the beginning:

“If the death penalty is not a deterrent, and it is not, and if the death penalty does not make us safer, and it does not, then it is only high-cost revenge.”

These words could easily have come from me or one of my colleagues at Amnesty International. We have after all been campaigning for abolition since the 1970s because we view capital punishment as the ultimate cruel and inhuman form of punishment.

But the quote actually comes from Charles M. Harris – a senior judge in Florida, one of only nine states in the United States to carry out death sentences in 2012.

Thankfully, Harris’s view is far from unique. Today, Amnesty International is releasing its annual report on death penalty statistics across the globe. Once again, we have seen the world move, slowly but surely, closer to becoming death penalty-free. Only 21 countries were recorded as having carried out executions last year, down from 28 a decade ago.

A longer perspective makes the change even more striking. When we first started campaigning for abolition of the death penalty 35 years ago, the world’s 16 abolitionist countries were a clear minority. Now, 97 countries have completely abolished the death penalty in law, while 140 in total are de facto death penalty free.

Coverage of AI's 2011 report is at the link.  Related posts are in the report categoy index.

National Registry of Exonerations News & Twitter Q&A

The National Registry of Exonerations hosts a Twitter Q&A today at 1:00 pm (EDT), 12:00 noon (CDT).

At 1:00 p.m. Eastern today, Professor Gross and Maurice Possley, the Registry’s lead writer/investigator and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, will host a Twitter Q & A on their findings. The media and the public are invited to participate by following #NRE12 or #innocence or @exonerationlist.

The organization has also issued a news release, "Prosecutors and Police are Assisting with Exonerations at Record High Levels, New Data Shows," available in Adobe .pdf format.  Here's the beginning:

In 2012, the number of cases in which prosecutors or police helped exonerate innocent defendants increased dramatically, according to a new report released today by the National Registry of Exonerations. Of 63 known exonerations in 2012, law enforcement initiated or cooperated in 34 or more than half (54 %).

Since 1989, prosecutors and police cooperated in 30 percent of the exonerations that the Registry has been able to identify (317 of 1050 exonerations in the national database at the end of last year). In 2012, for the first time, law enforcement cooperated in the majority of known exonerations. The previous high was 2008 when prosecutors or police assisted in 22 of 57 known exonerations (39 percent). In general, official cooperation is least likely among exonerations in capital murder and mass child sex abuse cases, and most likely in robbery and drug crime exonerations.

“We see a clear trend. Prosecutors and police are more open to re-investigating cases and clearing the names of innocent people who were wrongfully convicted,” said Michigan Law professor Samuel Gross, editor of the Registry and author of the “2012 Update” released today. “This is as it should be. The purpose of law enforcement is to seek truth and pursue justice. I’m glad to see they are now doing so more often after conviction, to help correct some of the terrible mistakes we sometimes make.”

Earlier coverage of the National Registry of Exonerations begins at the link. 

Ohio AG Issues Annual Capital Crimes Report

The Ohio Attorney General's 2012 Capital Crimes Annual Report is available in Adobe .pdf format.

"Annual report: more than third of death row inmates have avoided sentence since 1981," is the AP filing, via the Republic.

An annual report that looks at Ohio's capital punishment system says 128 inmates sentenced to death over the past three decades have avoided their sentence through court action, commutations or dying of natural causes.

The report by Attorney General Mike DeWine says the state sentenced a total of 316 inmates to death from 1981, when Ohio's current death penalty law was enacted, through 2012.

Eighteen inmates have been spared by Ohio governors, 24 died in prison and eight were found ineligible for execution because they are mentally disabled.

The report released Tuesday says six inmates face re-sentencing and 72 others had their death sentence reversed by various courts.

The state has put 50 inmates to death since executions were resumed in 1999.

"Capital punishment: Four slated for execution this year," is by Alan Johnson for the Columbus Dispatch.

The case of Ohio Death Row inmate Warren Waddy of Columbus illustrates why some people are frustrated with capital punishment.

Waddy, 59, has been on Death Row for 9,300 days — more than 25 years — since his conviction for strangling 22-year-old Paula Mason of Columbus with a jump rope after breaking into her apartment, tying her up, and beating her. Ronald Reagan was president at the time.

But Waddy’s case appears to have no resolution in sight. It is one of four cases cited in Attorney General Mike DeWine’s annual Capital Crimes report, released yesterday, as being held up in court due to claims that they should not be executed because of mental retardation. The case has cleared state courts, but layers of federal appeals remain untapped after a quarter-century of litigation.

DeWine’s report, which must be submitted by April 1 to the governor and state legislators, noted that five new death sentences were handed down in Ohio courts last year, including one for Caron E. Montgomery of Franklin County.

And:

The report said there have been 18 commutations since 1991, including four by Kasich, five by former Gov. Ted Strickland, one by Gov. Bob Taft, and eight by Gov. Richard F. Celeste. In recent years, 23 Death Row inmates died of natural causes while awaiting execution.

Recent coverage from Ohio includes a stepped up search for lethal injection drugs following an execution and a meeting of the state's Joint Task Force to Review the Administration of Ohio's Death Penalty.

Coverage of the 2012 AGs report is at the link.

New Report Points to Criminal Discovery Reforms for Texas

Improving Discovery in Criminal Cases in Texas is the title of a new report issued by Texas Appleseed and Texas Defender Service.  A news release announcing the report is also available.  This is from the news release:

The new report, Improving Discovery in Criminal Cases in Texas, is based on an analysis of discovery policies solicited from 43 district attorney’s offices across the state and interviews conducted by pro bono partner Locke Lord LLP in Dallas.

The report recommends Texas’ discovery statute (Code of Criminal Procedure, Article 39.14) be amended to provide these ABA best practices:

• Automatic access to discovery;
• Open file discovery that includes access to police reports, witness statements, expert reports, and criminal histories;
• Defined timelines for initiating discovery; and, 
• An explicit continuing obligation to disclose.

"Transparency could lessen wrongful convictions, study finds," is Chuck Lindell's report for the Austin American-Statesman.

Criminal justice in Texas could be fairer, faster and less likely to convict innocent people if prosecutors and defense lawyers were required to share more information before trial, a report by two legal advocacy groups says.

Texas law does not require prosecutors to disclose information that is commonly shared in most states, including police reports, witness statements and reports compiled by expert witnesses, says the report, “Improving Discovery in Criminal Cases in Texas,” to be formally released Wednesday.

The result is a hodgepodge of rules varying from county to county, with many district attorney’s offices employing a robust open-file policy for defendants while others restrict information, “meaning access to justice can depend, in part, on where the case is filed,” the report says.

What’s more, Texas is the only state that does not require some sort of mutual discovery before a criminal trial, with defense lawyers opening their files to prosecutors to reveal witness statements, expert opinions and other information that does not incriminate the defendant.

“By disclosing all relevant information, both parties are able to investigate and scrutinize the evidence against the accused. This increases the likelihood that a just result will be reached,” concludes the report, which was compiled by Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit public interest law center, and the Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit that represents death row inmates, by examining the practices of more than 40 Texas counties.

The Texas Tribune posts, "Report: Open Discovery May Thwart Wrongful Convictions," by Brandi Grissom.

The amount of evidence that Texans accused of crimes can get from prosecutors varies across the state, leading to inequities in the way justice is meted out, according to a report released Wednesday, which suggests that requiring more transparency could prevent wrongful convictions.

Texas Defender Service, which represents death row inmates, and Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit that advocates for social justice, researched discovery practices in 40 Texas counties. They found that the wide variation in discovery practices among prosecutors makes access to justice dependent upon the jurisdiction in which the defendant is charged. Those findings, said Rebecca Bernhardt, a Texas Defender Service spokeswoman, give weight to legislation filed in both the House and Senate that would create uniform discovery procedures and require both prosecutors and defense lawyers to share more information in criminal trials.

“We hope that lawmakers get an understanding of the status quo and understand the problems that exist under our current, outdated discovery statute,” Bernhardt said.

Rob Kepple, executive director of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association and a former prosecutor, said he agreed with the conclusions of the report.

“A good open file discovery system could help prevent some problems,” Kepple said. “I think it’s a pretty good report.” 

Efforts to reform discovery laws in Texas are not new but have picked up steam since the 2011 exoneration of Michael Morton. He spent nearly 25 years in prison for his wife’s murder before DNA evidence revealed that he was innocent and led to the arrest of another man who is awaiting trial for the crime.

Jordan Smith writes about a separate proposal, "Holding Prosecutors Accountable," at the Austin Chronicle.

In an effort to combat the growing number of wrongful convictions in Texas, state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, on Tuesday filed a bill that would expand the statute of limitations for filing with the State Bar grievances alleging prosecutorial misconduct.

Senate Bill 825 would start once a person is released from prison on a wrongful conviction the four-year statute of limitations for pursuing a complaint of prosecutorial misconduct with the State Bar of Texas. The current statute begins the clock at the time the violation occurs.

The proposed change in the law was prompted by the plight of Michael Morton who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the 1986 murder of his wife Christine. Morton was finally released from prison in 2011 after evidence testing revealed the DNA of another man, Mark Alan Norwood, was mingled with Christine's blood on a discarded blue bandana found after the murder behind the Morton's home.

Related posts are in the Michael Morton and Texas Legislature category indexes.  The responsibility of the state to provide exculpatory evidence to the defense was articulated in the 1963 Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland; more via Oyez.

More Calls for Review of Florida's Death Penalty

"Florida's death penalty needs fresh look," is the Tampa Bay Tribune editorial.

Five states have repealed the death penalty in the last five years, with Connecticut being the latest to do so in 2012. But as other states have become disenchanted with the ultimate punishment in light of so many wrongful convictions, Florida has moved in the opposite direction. Last year was the second straight that this state ranked first in the nation in new death sentences. There is no political will to follow the enlightened path of abolition, but Florida should analyze why it's such an outlier. One likely reason is that the state doesn't require a unanimous jury recommendation for a death sentence, and that should be corrected.

Florida sentenced 22 people to death last year. Compare that to the more populous states of California, which sentenced 14 inmates, and Texas, the state with the highest number of executions, which put only nine new inmates on death row last year, according to a report by the Death Penalty Information Center. The count raises Florida's death row to 408 inmates. But even as the state adds to death row, it is finding problems with the legal process that led to those convictions and sentences. Florida also leads the nation in the number of inmates who have had their death sentences reversed. Out of 142 such cases, Florida accounts for 24 exonerations, acquittals or charges subsequently dropped, according to the center. Some of these were people shown to be innocent of the crime. Frank Lee Smith, for instance, was exonerated posthumously. The real perpetrator was identified after Smith died from cancer after he spent the last 14 years of his life on death row.

For years, Raoul Cantero has been urging the state Legislature to require a unanimous jury recommendation for death sentences. Cantero, a former Florida Supreme Court justice who was appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush, saw how haphazardly the death penalty is applied and how that can lead to potentially fatal errors.

Today's Hernando Today publishes the column, "Florida needs to debate the death penalty," written by Rhonda Swan.

It defies logic that taking life honors life.

For the second year in a row, Florida has sent more convicted killers to death row than any other state.

And acting Palm Beach County State Attorney Peter Antonacci would like to send more. His office is now seeking the death penalty for all first-degree murder cases.

There were 22 new death penalty cases this year in Palm Beach County.

"You have a dead human being," Antonacci told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. He said that by not seeking the death penalty, "we have cheapened the value of human life."

There are many ways we cheapen the value of human life. Sexism, racism, ageism, discrimination against gays, the disabled, atheists and others with different or no religious views are but a few examples.

A political and economic system that allows millions to go without food, shelter and health care is another.

"Legislator wants to abolish capital punishment," is by Bill Cotterell for Florida Current.

An attorney-law professor who opposes capital punishment for pragmatic fiscal reasons, as well as legal and moral grounds,  reintroduced her bill Friday to abolish the death penalty in Florida.

Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda, D-Tallahassee, said she's not just making a symbolic gesture.

"The more people we can get educated about the death penalty, I think they will realize that opposition is mostly political posturing, rather than good policy," she told The Florida Current. "I actually believe we can show people that it's not a good way to spend public money."

Rehwinkel Vasilinda, a Tallahassee Community College law instructor starting her third legislative term, introduces the bill every year without so much as a committee hearing. Just how tough a tactical battle she's facing was illustrated in 2011, she said, when she offered her bill on the House floor as an amendment to another criminal-justice proposal.

WFOR-TV posts, "Florida Democrat Files Bill To Kill State’s Death Penalty."

It’s illegal in 17 states, and a new bill by a House Democrat would make it illegal in Florida.

A measure (HB 4005) to end the death penalty in Florida was filed Friday by Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda, D-Tallahassee, the News Service of Florida reports.

Rehwinkel Vasilinda said in a statement that the death penalty is not cost-effective and doesn’t deter crime.

“When you analyze the numbers, state-sponsored execution is not the correct answer,” said Rehwinkel Vasilinda, who said the state spends more than $50 million a year on death penalty cases.

Rep. Vasilinda's news release announcing the legislation is available in Adobe .pdf format.

Florda's Capitol News Service posts, "Unanimous Death Sentences." 

Tampa cop killer Humberto Delgado arrived on death row last year after his jury recommended he be put to death by an 8 to 4 vote. In December, William Davis’ jury split 7-5 even though he had asked them for death. Neither man would have received death in any of the other 32 states that have the death penalty.

That’s because thirty-one other states require all members of the jury to vote for death. The 32nd, Alabama,  requires at least 10 of the 12 jurors to say someone should die. Sheila Hopkins of the Florida Catholic Conference, says it is time for Florida to join the rest of the nation. “You know I think people should be very concerned and disturbed that potentially people who can be innocent would be given a death sentence”, says Hopkins.

Earlier coverage from Florida begins at the link.

Tulsa World's Lethal Rejection

That's the original title of Julie Delcour's editorial column in the Tulsa World, "Death penalty not living up to expectations."

Here's where capital punishment stands in America: 33 states and the federal government authorize it. Gallup and Pew Research Center polls show public support at above 60 percent. So reports that the death penalty is on its death bed are exaggerated, or are they?

Since 2005, five states have abolished the death penalty and California came close to doing so in November, Proposition 34 losing by four percentage points. Nearly 35 years ago, a law reinstating the death penalty there passed by 82 percent. In the years since, the death penalty has cost the state about $4 billion and California has not carried out a single execution in seven years and only 13 since the law went into effect.

Last fall, for the first time in its 155-year history, the Sacramento Bee opposed the death penalty editorially, calling it "an illusion," and saying:

"We need to end the fiction - the sooner the better. The state's death penalty is an outdated, flawed and expensive system of punishment that needs to be replaced with a rock-solid sentence of life imprisonment with no chance of parole."

More evidence that a gradual retreat from the death penalty is under way can be found in the number of new inmates added to state death rows. In 2000, 224 defendants received a death sentence compared with 77 in 2012, the second lowest since the death penalty was reinstituted in 1976.

And:

But not in Oklahoma, which, with 102 executions since 1976, has the highest number of executions per capita in the nation, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center. Texas leads the nation in executions with 493, trailed by Virginia, 109, and then Oklahoma.

Earlier coverage from Oklahoma begins at the link; also available, earlier coverage of the DPIC report.

Florida Roundup

"Death Penalty Question Revisited," is the December 23 report from AP filed by Bill Kaczor.  It's via the Lakeland Ledger.

The Florida Supreme Court will be asked to take another look at how judges should determine whether a death row inmate is mentally disabled.

The issue divided the high court last week in a 4-2 opinion upholding Freddie Lee Hall's death sentence for murdering Karol Hurst, a 21-year-old pregnant woman who was abducted while leaving a Leesburg grocery store in 1978. A co-defendant is serving a life sentence.

Defense lawyer Eric Pinkard, who works for a state office that represents death row inmates, said Friday that he will ask for a rehearing and, if that fails, may take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The federal high court has prohibited the execution of mentally disabled inmates as unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment, but it has allowed states to determine what constitutes mental disability.

The majority of Florida justices ruled Thursday in Hall's case that they are bound by precedent set in earlier decisions prohibiting anyone with an IQ of 70 or higher from being declared mentally disabled, regardless of other evidence to the contrary.

The Palm Beach Post reported, "Lawyers question necessity, cost of local state attorney’s avid pursuit of the death penalty in murder cases," on December 26.  It's by Jane Musgrave.

With his arm wrapped tightly around his wife, Naomi, Gerard Gonsalves seemed to be protecting her from the looming possibility that the loss of one son could cost them the other.

At a recent court hearing, the West Palm Beach couple looked on as psychologists and psychiatrists told a judge what they already knew: Their 24-year-old son, Brandin, suffers from a panoply of mental ills.

Since he was diagnosed at age 13, they tried to get him help to deal with his demons. The search ended in July when Brandin stabbed his 25-year-old brother 69 times in a fatal attack he has said was ordered by God.

Still reeling from the loss, the couple is now confronted with another: The state wants to kill their youngest son for killing their firstborn.

The case underscores the problems with a system State Attorney Peter Antonacci instituted when he was appointed in March, some defense attorneys say. Now, instead of asking a committee of top prosecutors to review every case to determine which accused killer should die for his or her crime, the office automatically seeks the death penalty in all first-degree murder cases.

“It’s crazy,” said Public Defender Carey Haughwout, whose office defends the indigent and represents about half of those charged with murder. “There’s no review done before they file a notice to seek the death penalty. My concern is that it’s handled as a matter of course.”

Under the policy, the number of death penalty cases has doubled from 12 in 2009 to 24 this year. That means costs — both financial and human — have increased as well.

Haughwout and other defense attorneys say they hope the policy changes when State Attorney-elect Dave Aronberg takes office in January. Aronberg declined to discuss how he would decide which accused murderer deserves the death penalty. But on the campaign trail he promised to reinstitute the committee system that was used by his mentor, former longtime State Attorney Barry Krischer, who is helping him prepare to take office.

Three news articles focus on the 2012 DPIC report and Florida death sentences.  The South Florida Sun Sentinel published, "Florida leads nation in sending killers to Death Row," by Rafael Olmeda.  It's also available via Huffington Post.

Florida may be fourth in the nation when it comes to population, but we're still No. 1 when it comes to sending convicted killers to death row, according to a report from a national nonprofit group that studies the death penalty in America.

The Sunshine State sentenced 21 inmates to death in 2012 — more than California, more than Pennsylvania, and even more than Texas, which continues to lead in the number of inmates actually executed, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

It's the second straight year in which Florida has held the top spot among the states that have a death penalty, but it still represents a big spike over last year, when we sent 13 people to death row. California came in second both years, having sent 10 inmates to death row in 2011 and 14 this year.

"Florida led the nation in death sentences in 2012, report says," by Jeff Weiner for the Orlando Sentinel.

A report by a national nonprofit group that studies the death penalty found that Florida remains among the most active states in using it and put more defendants on death row in 2012 than any other state.

The Death Penalty Information Center's report reveals that only nine states executed a prisoner this year, with Florida putting three to death. Texas, with 15, executed the most defendants, the report states.

However, the Sunshine State far exceeded other states in new death sentences: 21 defendants were sentenced to die in Florida through mid-December, the research says.

Also, "Report: Florida leads nation in new death penalty cases," is by Elaine Silvestrini for the Tampa Tribune.

As capital punishment declines in use and support nationwide, Florida leads the country in the number of death sentences handed down this year, according to a report by a group that advocates against the death penalty.

Florida judges sentenced 21 killers to death in 2012, followed by California with death sentences for 14 murderers, Texas with 9 and Pennsylvania with seven, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The four states accounted for 65 percent of the death sentences handed out in the United States.

Nationally, the number of death sentences issued was the second lowest since capital punishment was reinstated nationwide in 1976.

In Florida, Duval County sent the most inmates to death row this year, at four, according to information from the state Department of Corrections. Hillsborough and Pinellas counties each sent one person to death row this year.

Earlier coverage from Florida includes the year's final execution and questions of an inmate's competency to be executed.  Earlier coverage of the 2012 DPIC report is also available.

America’s Retreat From the Death Penalty

That's the title of the editorial in today's New York Times.  Here's the beginning of this concise summary of the state of capital punishment in America:

When the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, it said there were two social purposes for imposing capital punishment for the most egregious crimes: deterrence and retribution. In recent months, these justifications for a cruel and uncivilized punishment have been seriously undermined by a growing group of judges, prosecutors, scholars and others involved in criminal justice, conservatives and liberals alike.

A distinguished committee of scholars convened by the National Research Council found that there is no useful evidence to determine if the death penalty deters serious crimes. Many first-rate scholars have tried to prove the theory of deterrence, but that research “is not informative about whether capital punishment increases, decreases, or has no effect on homicide rates,” the committee said.

A host of other respected experts have also concluded that life imprisonment is a far more practical form of retribution, because the death penalty process is too expensive, too time-consuming and unfairly applied.

The punishment is supposed to be reserved for the very worst criminals, but dozens of studies in state after state have shown that the process for deciding who should be sent to death row is arbitrary and discriminatory.

Thanks to the Innocence Project and the overturning of 18 wrongful convictions of death-row inmates with DNA evidence and the exonerations of 16 others charged with capital crimes, the American public is increasingly aware that the system makes terrible mistakes. Since 1973, a total of 142 people have been freed from death row after being exonerated with DNA or other kinds of evidence.

All of these factors have led the states to retreat from the death penalty in recent years — in both law and in practice. In 2012, Connecticut became the fifth state in five years to abolish the penalty. Nine states executed inmates, the fewest in two decades. Three-fourths of the 43 executions in 2012 were carried out in only four states. The number of new death sentences remained low at 77 — about one-third the number in 2000 — with just four states accounting for almost two-thirds of those sentences. While 33 states retain the death penalty on their books, 13 of them have not executed anyone for at least five years.

"Cost of justice is a factor in the death penalty," is the Amarillo Globe-News editorial from the January 1 edtition.

According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the first scheduled execution of 2013 in the state of Texas will occur Jan. 29, when Kimberly McCarthy will receive the ultimate form of punishment for robbing and stabbing to death a 70-year-old woman in Dallas County. Following the murder, McCarthy also used the deceased victim’s credit cards and vehicle.

The Death Penalty Information Center released a report Dec. 18, indicating that capital punishment in 2012 — as far as new death sentences — was down to its second-lowest total since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

In 2012, there were 43 executions nationwide — 15 in Texas.

And:

Justice should not come down to cost, but there can be no denying that counties have no other choice but to make the price of justice a major consideration when it comes to the death penalty.

Earlier coverage of the 2012 DPIC report begins at the link.  Related posts are in the editorial category index.

Use of Death Sentences Continues to Fall in U.S.

That's the title of Ethan Bronner's report in today's New York Times.

Thirty-six years after the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, its use is waning, with prosecutors and juries preferring to sentence convicted murderers to life in prison without parole. New data for 2012 show that nine states executed inmates this year, the fewest in two decades, and the number of death sentences handed down this year — 80 — was about a third of the total in 2000.

“We have done polling on this, and the biggest reason is lingering doubt about guilt,” said Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks executions around the country and released the numbers this week. “Between 90 and 95 percent of the people are aware that there have been exonerations based on DNA evidence.”

While a majority of states — 33 — still have the death penalty on the books, that number has also been on the decline. Connecticut banned capital punishment this year, the fifth state in five years to do so, following Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York. Twenty-nine states either do not have the death penalty or have not carried out an execution in five years.

In addition, four states with histories of executing convicted murderers — Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia — sentenced no one to death this year. Three-quarters of the 43 people put to death in 2012 were in four states: Arizona, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas.

Another major reason for the decline is that the death penalty involves enormous expense and numerous appeals; some prosecutors say they prefer life imprisonment.

Stan Garnett, the district attorney in Boulder County, Colo., wrote recently that as his state considered repealing the death penalty, he would like his fellow citizens to know that he was “not morally or philosophically opposed” to it. But he considers the death penalty impractical because it is expensive, time-consuming and often unfairly applied.

There has been extensive coverage of the DPIC annual report, rt, The Death Penalty in 2012: Year End Report.  A news release and additional information is also available at the DPIC website.   Earlier news coverage of the report begins at the link.

Let me also link to several notable articles on the report.  "Texas Still Leads Nation in Executions," is Jordan Smith's post at the Austin Chronicle.

Indeed, in its year-end report, released today, the Death Penalty Information Center notes that the number of executions this year was the same as in 2011, but that overall executions have declined 49% since 2000. Moreover, while the number of new death sentences imposed nationwide in 2012 wasn't as low as it was in 2011, the number of new death sentences has declined 75% from the high of 315 new sentences imposed in 1996. Among those sent to death row in the mid-Nineties was Damon Thibodeaux, who confessed to the rape and murder of his cousin, a crime he did not commit. In September, Thibodeaux became the 300th person exonerated by DNA evidence, according to the Innocence Network's's report on 2012 exonerations.

Stateline posts, "Report: Death Penalty Becoming 'Irrelevant'," by Maggie Clark.

Only nine states executed death row inmates in 2012 and the number of new death sentences, at 78, was nearly the lowest number of new sentences issued since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center’s year-end report, released today (December 18).

The punishment also came under attack this year from advocates in California, who narrowly lost a death penalty repeal campaign headlined by supportive district attorneys, judges, victims’ families and former prison officials.

Based on these trends, says Richard Dieter, executive director of the center, “the death penalty appears to be an increasingly irrelevant component of our criminal justice system. It still exists, but as far as using it as a response to crime, it’s not the norm and it’s not carried out uniformly across the country.”

While the trend of the last 10 years shows that death sentences and executions are declining, one state did act this year to speed up its death penalty process. In May, South Dakota passed legislation limiting death row inmates to one post-conviction appeal which must be filed within two years of their convictions. The state executed two people this year, its first executions since 2007.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram on the Death Penalty and Exonerations

"Hope and concern on death penalty, exonerations," is the title of the editorial in today's Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Two reports issued this week offer news that's both sobering and encouraging about crime and punishment in America, especially regarding the justice system's ultimate penalty and the continuing trend of righting wrongs through exoneration.

A study by the Death Penalty Information Center shows that numbers of both capital sentences and executions are down significantly. Meanwhile, the Innocence Network released reports on 22 more people -- including one in Tarrant County -- who have been exonerated of the crimes for which they were convicted.

It's troubling that Texas leads the nation in both categories.

While findings in the reports speak to an evolving and improving system of justice, the statistics show that making the criminal justice system truly just must be an ongoing process.

And:

Efforts to make convictions more reliable resulted last legislative session in a law to improve eyewitness identification evidence. For 2013, Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, has pre-filed SB 87, to require that police electronically record interrogations in cases including murder, kidnapping, human trafficking and sexual assault. Texas must keep trying to perfect justice.

The editorial also reference this month's report from the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and its annual report on Texas capital punishment developments in 2012.

Earlier coverage of SB 87 begins at the link.

Related posts are in the report index.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/12/19/4497567/hope-and-concern-on-death-penalty.html#storylink=cpy

DPIC Issues Annual Report

The Death Penalty Information Center has released its annual report, The Death Penalty in 2012: Year End Report.  A news release and additional information is also available at the DPIC website.  It's received extensive press coverage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The AP report is, "Report: Few states have bulk of executions," by Mark Sherman, via the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Just four states carried out more than three-fourths of the executions in the United States this year, while another 23 states have not put an inmate to death in 10 years, an anti-capital punishment group reports.

The Death Penalty Information Center says in its annual report that Texas led the nation, as it does every year, with 15 executions. Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma had 6 each. Together, the four states accounted for 33 of the 43 executions in the United States in 2012.

The report also says that a handful of states were responsible for nearly two-thirds of death sentences imposed in 2012.

Both executions and new death sentences are far below their peaks since executions resumed in 1977 following a halt imposed by the Supreme Court. Texas' 492 executions since 1977 are the most, by far. No more executions are scheduled before the end of the year, the group says.

"By every count, the death penalty is declining and becoming less relevant. It's not turned to even in states that have been strong proponents of the death penalty. I'd even include Texas, which is sentencing many fewer people to death," said Richard Dieter, the center's executive director and author of the report.

Dieter singled out Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, none of which carried out an execution this year. And among those states, the only new death sentences were two in Georgia and one in Louisiana.

"Fewest states in 20 years executed inmates in 2012: report," by Corrie MacLaggan at Reuters.

Nine states executed inmates in 2012, the fewest number in 20 years, as several Southern states that usually carry out executions did not put any inmates to death, according to a report released Tuesday by a nonprofit that tracks death penalty data.

"There are still 33 states with the death penalty, but very few are actually regularly carrying out executions," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center and author of the report.

Forty-three inmates were executed this year, the same number as 2011, according to the report by the Washington, D.C.-based organization. Last year, 13 states executed inmates. No more executions are scheduled for this year.

"Report: 2012 executions ties 2011 total," is the UPI coverage.

The 43 executions in 2012 was 56 percent less than the peak in 1999 and equaled last year's total, the report, released Tuesday, said.

Twenty-nine states either have no death penalty or have not carried out an execution in five years, the report said.

The number of new death sentences in 2012 was the second lowest since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, the center said. Seventy-eight people were sentenced to death in 2012, a 75 percent drop since 1996, when 315 capital punishment sentences were handed down.

"Executions, death sentences remain steady over past year," by Bill Mears at CNN.

"Capital punishment is becoming marginalized and meaningless in most of the country," said Richard Dieter, DPIC executive director and author of the report.

"In 2012, fewer states have the death penalty, fewer carried out executions, and death sentences and executions were clustered in a small number of states. It is very likely that more states will take up the question of death-penalty repeal in the years ahead."

The nonprofit organization provides accurate figures and analyses, but opposes use of the death penalty.

Ninety-eight people were executed in 1999, the highest yearly total since 1976, when the Supreme Court allowed resumption of executions by the states after a four-year moratorium.

A CNN/Opinion Research Poll conducted 14 months ago found more Americans for the first time in recent memory favor a sentence of life in prison over the death penalty for murderers, 50% to 48%.

Politico posts, "Death penalty on the decline?"  It's written by Mackenzie Weinger.

“More than half the states (29) in the country either do not have the death penalty or have not carried out an execution in five years, and almost half (23) have been without executions in ten years,” according to the report. “All executions in 2012 were by lethal injection, and all used a relatively new drug, pentobarbital, either alone or in combination with other drugs. Only 16 percent of the executions this year stemmed from the murder of a black victim, even though blacks are the victims in about 50 percent of murders.”

Meanwhile, 80 people were sentenced to death in 2012, with more than half of the new sentences in the south, the study stated. That’s a slight uptick from 2011’s total of 76 inmates sentenced, which was the lowest since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

And the report noted that this April, Connecticut became the fifth state in five years to abolish the death penalty. The death penalty was replaced with life in prison without parole, but the ban doesn’t apply to the 11 inmates currently on death row in the state. Connecticut joined 16 other states in repealing the death penalty. A California referendum sought to abolish capital punishment, but the measure failed.

For 2013, the report points to states such as Maryland, Colorado and New Hampshire that “appear to be moving closer to legislative votes like Connecticut’s.”

"Executions, Death Sentences, Hold Steady at 2011 Levels," is Ashby Jones' post at the Wall Street Journal Law blog.

The past decade or so has seen a sharp drop-off in executions and death-sentences.

The year 2000, for instance, saw 85 executions and 224 new death sentences. By last year, those numbers had fallen to 43 and 76, respectively, according to statistics compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center, an organization largely opposed to the way the death penalty is used in the U.S.

The numbers for 2012 are very similar to those of last year, according to the DPIC, which released its study Tuesday. According to the study, the number of executions stayed the same, at 43, and 78 death sentences were imposed across the country, slightly more than last year.

Richard Dieter, the DPIC’s executive director, says it’s a continuation of a trend. While the numbers stayed roughly the same, year to year, the number of states that carried out executions fell to nine, down from 13 a year ago. Nearly three-quarters of all executions happened in four states: Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Arizona.

“It’s further evidence that the death penalty is narrowing, clustering, becoming more regionalized,” said Mr. Dieter. “The majority of people still philosophically support the death penalty, but when it comes to carrying it out and imposing it, death sentences and executions just aren’t happening at the rate they used to.”

Related posts are in the report index.

Texas Coalition Releases Annual Report

"Report: Death Penalty Applied Haphazardly in Texas," is Peter Malof's post for Texas Public News Service.

While the use of capital punishment is declining, Texas still relies on it more than any other state - and implements it haphazardly, according to a report released today.

Striking variations exist between counties about how often prosecutors seek the death penalty, says report author Kristin Houlé, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. For example, in the past year, more than half the state's new death sentences were handed down in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. By contrast, there were no new death sentences in Houston.

"It really is subject to the discretion of individual prosecutors. Cases with individuals with comparable backgrounds - or who raised similar legal arguments - received vastly different treatment in the criminal justice system."

National surveys show support for the death penalty on the decline. It's now about 60 percent, down from a high of 80 percent. But support drops below 50 percent when alternatives, such as life sentences without parole, are included in polls.

The TCADP report, Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2012: The Year in Review, is available in Adobe .pdf format.

TCADP has also issued a news release announcing the report.  Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the release:

More than half of all new death sentences were imposed in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex this year, while no new death sentences were imposed in Harris County for the third time in five years, according to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty’s (TCADP) new report, Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2012: The Year in Review.

New death sentences in Texas have declined more than 75% since 2002 and remain near historic low levels in 2012.  To date this year, juries have condemned nine new individuals to death in Texas, a slight increase over 2011 and 2010, when new death sentences fell to their lowest number since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas’ revised death penalty statute in 1976.  The verdict in a capital murder trial in Brazos County, in which prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, has been delayed indefinitely pending a legal dispute over jury instructions.

Tarrant and Dallas Counties each accounted for two new death sentences and Johnson County accounted for one.  Dallas County now leads the state in new death sentences since 2008, accounting for nearly 20% of sentences imposed in the last five years.  Dallas County also led the state in executions, accounting for 5 of the 15 executions carried out this year.

Related posts are in the report category index.

Texas Bill Prefiled to Require Electronic Recording of Custodial Interrogations

"Bill Would Require Police to Record Interrogations," is the Texas Tribune report by Maurice Chammah.

There are moments of the two-day police interrogation that led to Christopher Ochoa’s wrongful conviction — which resulted in his spending 12 years in prison before a 2002 exoneration — that will never be known. Not all of the interrogation that preceded Ochoa's false confession to the murder of Pizza Hut employee Nancy DePriest in Austin — and implication of his roommate, Richard Danziger — was recorded.

Some advocates argue that such false confessions could be prevented if police interrogations were recorded. SB 87 by state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, would police require police to record the questioning of suspects in cases involving murder, kidnapping, human trafficking and some sex crimes.

“Recording an interrogation is the most accurate means of preserving what happened in an interrogation room and what a suspect actually said,” Ellis said in an email.

Texas law already requires in most cases that investigators tape the confession itself. But in the wake of a handful of exonerations involving false confessions, defense attorneys and other advocates worry that without a recording of the entire interrogation, they may never know how a false confession occurred. Nineteen other states and the District of Columbia already require such recordings.

While some prosecutors and police support the idea, others worry that it could be used to unfairly target law enforcement officers and that it would make it harder to convince a jury that a confession was valid in the absence of a recording. The bill includes a variety of exceptions to the rule, allowing for spontaneously-given confessions and faulty equipment, and advocates hope those will make police officers comfortable that the recording requirement would not undermine their work.

Requiring recorded interrogations was a suggestion of the 2010 Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions, which made policy recommendations based on its review of overturned convictions. Among the panel's other suggestions was reforming eyewitness sidentification practices, and lawmakers approved legislation that aligned with that recommendation in 2011.

More on SB 87, including the text, is at the link.  The 83rd Texas Legislature convenes January 8th for its 140-day session.  The Texas Legislature Online website is a model of open, accessible information.  It allows individuals to track bills, committee meetings, and create alerts.  The Legislative Reference Library, located on the 2nd Floor of the Texas Capitol, also has a helpful website.

Related posts are in the custodial interrogation, false confessions, state legislation, and Texas Legislature category indexes.  More on the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions and its 2010 report, at the links.

Coverage of the 2011 Texas legislative session and its work on the Cole Panel recommendations is also available.

Texas Prosecutors Downplay Misconduct

"District Attorneys' Report: Misconduct Exceedingly Rare," is Brandi Grissom's Texas Tribune report.

In a report issued Monday morning, an association representing Texas prosecutors disputed what they say are illegitimate claims of rampant prosecutorial misconduct without accountability.

“It’s just not true,” said Rob Kepple, executive director of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.

The association spent months reviewing 91 Texas cases in which the Northern California Innocence Project in a March report identified prosecutor error or misconduct. The TDCAA said it discovered only six instances “in which a prosecutor arguably engaged in deliberately dishonest or fraudulent conduct that produced unjust results.”

And:

The role of prosecutors in wrongful convictions and questions about accountability for state lawyers whose mistakes lead to years in prison for innocent people have been the subject of intense debate in the wake of the Michael Morton exoneration last year. Morton was convicted in 1987 of murdering his wife and spent nearly 25 years in prison before DNA testing revealed that another man was connected to the crime. 

Morton’s attorneys allege that the prosecutor in his case, former Williamson County District Attorney Ken Anderson (now a state district judge), deliberately withheld evidence that could have led to his acquittal. Anderson has denied any wrongdoing, and a special court of inquiry that will determine whether the judge should face criminal charges is set to begin in December.

Morton applauded the association's report.

"This report will serve as a good starting point for our discussions with various stakeholders as we prepare to ask the Texas Legislature to make meaningful changes to state law," he said in a prepared statement.

Innocence Project advocates, along with Morton and other exonerees, have called for more accountability for prosecutors who commit misconduct. In its March report, the Innocence Project said it had identified court rulings in 91 cases in which judges ruled there was prosecutorial error or misconduct from 2004 to 2008. None of those cases, the report said, resulted in discipline for the state lawyer.

Related posts are in the prosecutorial misconduct index.  Earlier coverage of Michael Morton's exoneration and the court of inquiry begins at the link.

Missouri Prosecutors Stay Quiet on Death Penalty Study

That's the title of an AP report written by Alan Scher Zagier rgarding the ABA Missouri Death Penalty Assessment.  It's via the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; it's also available via the Columbia Missourian.  Here's an extended excerpt:

When the American Bar Association sought to review Missouri's death penalty laws as part of a nationwide study of capital punishment, it turned to a collection of the state's most esteemed lawyers, judges and law professors for help.

The two-year ABA study, released earlier this year, relied on detailed responses from law enforcement agencies, medical examiners, crime labs and others involved in handing down the state's ultimate legal sanction. But one group was largely and notably absent from the discussion: the prosecutors who decide whether to seek the death penalty in the first place.

Several members of the panel that worked on the study said the prosecutors' lack of cooperation hindered efforts to fully evaluate the death penalty system in a state that executed 68 people since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, trailing only Texas, Virginia, Oklahoma and Florida.

ABA surveys sent to prosecutors in Kansas City, Springfield, Columbia, Cape Girardeau and St. Charles went unanswered, while the state Attorney General's Office provided limited information. Daniel White, prosecutor in Clay County in suburban Kansas City, was the only survey recipient to write back with his own thoughts but declined to participate, saying he did not want to "embolden enemies of justice."

White, who has sought the death penalty just twice in nearly 20 years, said sharing his insights would "generate a public document subsequently available to others who may not have justice as their primary mission."

"I can't quantify the soul searching, legal research, fact finding and energy expended in first, arriving at the decision to see the death penalty and second, actually going forward," White wrote. "It's not an easy decision; nor should it be."

The ABA sought details on the training and qualifications of assistant prosecutors who handle capital cases, including their caseloads. The association also asked about office budgets and salaries, number of previous and active death penalty cases, procedures for sharing discovery evidence with defense lawyers, interactions with families of victims and policies on plea bargains.

The study panel had members from Missouri, including U.S. District Court judges Nanette Laughrey and Stephen Limbaugh Jr. and Harold Lowenstein, a former state representative who spent 28 years as a judge for the Missouri Court of Appeals and is now in private practice in Kansas City. The panel also included two MU law professors and another from St. Louis University.

A 436-page report that came from the study includes recommendations that mostly would require legislative action. They include improved procedures for preserving biological evidence and a call for limits on the 17 aggravating circumstances under which prosecutors can seek death against murder suspects.

The Missouri Death Penalty Assessment Report is available at the ABA website.

Earlier coverage of the ABA's Missouri Assessment begins at the link; also available, coverage of Missouri's decision to switch lethal injection drugs.

Texas Bar to Honor UT Arlington Professor for Indigent Defense Work

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports, "State Bar of Texas to honor UT Arlington official," by Diane Smith.

Michael Moore isn't a lawyer, but his work is helping change how Texas provides the poor with legal representation.

Moore, dean of undergraduate students and senior vice provost at the University of Texas at Arlington, is the first recipient of an award created in his honor by the State Bar of Texas.

He is being singled out for 15 years of service on the Committee on Legal Services to the Poor in Criminal Matters.

"I am humbled by the recognition," Moore said. "I always felt the work that we did was very much a collective effort by members of the committee. To be recognized by my former committee members and the State Bar with this award is indeed a surprise and a humbling experience."

The Michael K. Moore Award for Research and Writing in the Area of Indigent Defense will be presented July 23 in San Antonio during the State Bar of Texas' annual Advanced Criminal Law Course.

Jeff Blackburn, committee chairman, said Moore used his research talents to expose problems in Texas' criminal defense of low-income people.

And:

Allan Butcher, UTA professor emeritus and founding member of the committee, said Moore was enlisted to advise the committee about how to best survey the state of indigent defense in Texas.

The result was, "Muting Gideon's Trumpet: The Crisis in Indigent Criminal Defense in Texas."

Butcher said this work exposed a system in crisis and alludes to the U.S. Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright, which determined that criminal defendants have a right to an attorney when they can't afford one. The report helped lay the foundation for the Fair Defense Act of 2001, which overhauled the legal representation of poor people accused of crimes.

You can read the 2000 report, Muting Gideon's Trumpet: The Crisis in Indigent Criminal Defense in Texas, in Adobe .pdf format.

Related posts are in the indigent defense category index.

Ending the Practical Argument About the Death Penalty

That's the title of Paul Waldman's article in the current issue of American Prospect.  It's subtitled, "We're left to argue only the moral question."

When he was running for president in 2000, George W. Bush was often asked about the fact that as governor of Texas, he executed 152 people, more than any other governor in modern history at the time (though his successor Rick Perry has since surpassed him). Bush always responded that he believed the death penalty saves lives. In other words, his primary justification was a practical argument, not a moral argument. But the empirical evidence on the question of whether the death penalty was always fuzzy at best.

Like most death penalty opponents, I was always very skeptical of claims like Bush's (isn't that odd, how our beliefs about what is always seem to line up so neatly with our beliefs about what ought to be). Despite what you might believe from watching Law & Order, most murders aren't carefully planned so that the perpetrator can get his hands on his grandmother's fortune, giving him plenty of time to contemplate the potential consequences if he gets caught. People who kill other people tend to do it out of anger or desperation, and the idea that some significant number of them would stop themselves if they knew they might be executed if they got caught, but go ahead with the murder if they knew they'd spend the rest of their lives in jail, just doesn't make much sense.

So why haven't social scientists been able to answer this question definitively? The main problem is that there just aren't enough executions to give you the kind of healthy sample size you need. As Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers tell us, the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that the existing research on the topic just can't tell us one way or the other whether the death penalty has any deterrent effect.

And:

In a way, the practical claims are too easy to make. It certainly made it easy for Bush—he could just say the death penalty saves lives, and he didn't need to provide a moral justification for the execution assembly line they have in the Lone Star State. The moral claims require you to be clearer about your values. That's a debate we ought to have.

More on the Stevenson/Wolfers column at the link; it begins coverage of the National Research Council study on deterrence.  Related posts are in the deterrence index.

The Death-Penalty Debate Represents a Market Failure

That's the title of a column at Bloomberg News View, written by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers on the recent deterrence study published by the National Reserach Council.  Stevenson and Wolfers are professors at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.  Here's an extended excerpt from the beginning of the essay.  There are graphs at the link.

The debate over the death penalty offers a vivid illustration of a tragic flaw in the market of ideas: Strong beliefs attract a lot more attention, and can have a lot more influence, than the truth.

In recent years, five U.S. states have eliminated capital punishment, and several others are currently reconsidering their policies. Advocates of the death penalty insist the moves will lead to more murders. They point to a number of studies conducted over the past couple of decades that purport to find clear evidence supporting their view. Experts happily serve up unequivocal congressional testimony, and feed their analyses to lobby groups.

The reality, unsatisfying and inconvenient as it may be, is that we simply don’t know how capital punishment affects the homicide rate. That’s the conclusion of the National Academy of Sciences, which typically plays the role of impartial arbiter in these social-science debates. Their expert panel recently concluded that existing research “is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases, or has no effect on homicide rates,” and that such studies “should not influence policy judgments about capital punishment.”

The panel’s conclusions largely echo those from research conducted by one of us (Justin Wolfers) jointly with Stanford University law professor John Donohue. That research replicated and probed the leading studies, finding that even minor changes in how the analyses were conducted dramatically altered the conclusions. As a result, there’s “not just ‘reasonable doubt’ about whether there is any deterrent effect of the death penalty, but profound uncertainty,” the authors wrote. Indeed, “we remain unsure even of whether” the effects “are positive or negative.”

How could the confident claims of those earlier researchers end up being so wrong? Let’s start by exploring why it’s so difficult to give a precise answer to those interested in the effects of the death penalty.

As big a deal as capital punishment may seem, it’s actually quite rare. Since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976, there have been about 670,000 homicides and only 1,296 executions, a rate of about one execution per 500 murders. This makes the task of discerning its specific impact very difficult.

To complicate things further, the homicide rate fluctuates enormously for reasons unrelated to capital punishment. So the correlation between capital punishment and homicide rates can be positive or negative, depending on the specific sample of states or countries analyzed, the sample period chosen, and which other determinants are accounted for.

Even if the correlation between capital punishment and murder rates could be reliably estimated, that wouldn’t be enough to prove causation. For instance, more vigorous capital punishment probably occurs at the same time as other reforms to sentencing, prisons and policing. Unless these variables are measured accurately -- and our existing criminal-justice statistics do not provide adequate measures -- it is impossible to disentangle which reforms are driving the homicide rate.

The Bloomberg column is noted at the Wall Street Journal Real Time Economics blog.

Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers look at the problems of measuring the effectiveness of the death penalty. “As big a deal as capital punishment may seem, it’s actually quite rare. Since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976, there have been about 670,000 homicides and only 1,296 executions, a rate of about one execution per 500 murders. This makes the task of discerning its specific impact very difficult. To complicate things further, the homicide rate fluctuates enormously for reasons unrelated to capital punishment.

Earlier coverage of the NRC deterrence study begins at the link.

Indigent Defense Given Short Shrift in Federal Justice Grants

That's the title of commentary from Robert M.A. Johnson for the Hill.  He's co-chair of the Constitution Project's National Right to Counsel Committee.  Here's the beginning of a must-read on the state of indigent defense:

A recently released federal report confirms what most observers have known for a long time—when it comes to federal funding, those who represent the poor in the criminal justice system are largely left out in the cold.  The new study, which members of Congress asked the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct, examines how state, local and tribal governments use critical criminal justice grants – such as the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants (Byrne JAG) and Byrne Competitive grant programs – they receive from the federal government.
   
The GAO found that legal assistance for defendants unable to afford it on their own consistently comprised the smallest percentage of state, local and tribal spending of federal grants. Based on survey responses, the GAO estimated states only allocated seven-tenths of one percent of Byrne JAG money to indigent legal defense over a five-year period, while prosecutors and law enforcement received about 38 percent. The imbalance is even starker at the local level, where indigent defense received a paltry one-tenth of one percent of the money, compared with law enforcement and prosecutors who receive 54 percent. In total, over those five years, police received $1.8 billion, prosecutors and courts nearly $300 million, and indigent defense only $22 million.  Clearly, when it comes to achieving fairness and parity in criminal justice funding, government at every level is simply falling short.

 Related posts are in the indigent defense index.

The State of Electronic Recording of Custodial Interrogations

The March/April issue of Judicature, the publication of the American Judicature Society, contains the article, "A Compendium of law relating to the electronic recording of custodial interrogations," by Thomas P. Sullivan.  He's a partner at Jenner & Block in Chicago, and former U.S. Attorney.

Here's the introduction:

This compendium has been assembled in order to summarize in a single document the information my associates and I have collected during the past eight years relating to federal and state law and practices concerning electronic recording of custodial interviews of felony suspects.

When we began to investigate this topic in 2003, there were two supreme courts which previously ruled that state law enforcement officials must make electronic recordings of custodial interviews of felony suspects, Alaska and Minnesota. That year, Illinois became the first state to enact a mandatory electronic recording statute, limited to suspects in homicide investigations. Since then the legislatures of ten other states¹ and the District of Columbia have enacted recording statutes concerning electronic recording of custodial interrogations involving a variety of crimes. The supreme courts of two other states have adopted rules requiring recording.² In nine other states, the supreme courts and legislatures are considering whether to require electronic recording of custodial interviews of felony suspects.³

Following several years of study, conferences and drafting, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in July 2010 adopted a comprehensive uniform state mandatory recording statute. Representatives of the Conference will work with the state uniform law commissions and interested stakeholders in those states that do not already have mandatory legislation or court rules, to pursue introduction and enactment of the uniform statute.

During the past seven years, my associates and I have made calls to over 1,000 police and sheriff departments throughout the United States to inquire about their practices in recording custodial interviews from beginning to end. With few exceptions, in the many police and sheriff departments we have contacted – those in states in which recording is required, and those in which recording is a voluntary practice – we have received enthusiastic support for recording expressed by experienced law enforcement personnel. We have obtained similar favorable endorsements from prosecutors and members of the judiciary. Those who do not record often warn of hypothetical dangers and downsides that are not mentioned by those that have experience with recording.

This Compendium describes our findings about the practices of the states and certain federal agencies with respect to recording custodial interrogations. It is divided into the following five parts:

Part 1 contains a summary of the benefits of electronic recordings of custodial interviews.

Part 2 contains a summary of the law and practice of each state with recording custodial interviews of suspects in felony investigations.

In the states in which recording of suspects is not clearly required by statute or court rule in a defined categories of felonies, I have listed the departments that record on their own initiative. Those named are police departments unless otherwise indicated. CS refers to county sheriff departments, FD to fire departments, and DPS to departments of public safety. Some states have statutes regarding the need for all parties to a conversation to consent to an electronic recording, and/or have statutes relating to the use of hidden cameras in public places; most, but not all, exempt the police. Hence, local law on these subjects should be ascertained when drafting electronic recording statutes and rules.

We have not conducted a traditional survey. Rather, we have obtained information about the listed departments from (1) telephone calls to police and sheriff departments we believe record a majority of their custodial interviews; (2) from leads to departments provided by personnel in those departments; and (3) from completed forms distributed by an Illinois firm that trains police investigators. We have on file contemporaneous memoranda of the contents of every call, and the completed survey forms. I am confident that there are thousands more that currently record, but which we have not identified owing to the resources available during the past seven years to make calls; our calls continue. Readers are encouraged to send me additions or corrections to the lists.

Part 3 summarizes what we have learned regarding the recording practices of federal investigative agencies.

Readers will observe that many of the primary federal agencies do not record custodial interrogations as a matter of course, most notably those of the Department of Justice - the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Those agencies still adhere to traditional methods of recording their interviews, using handwritten notes or unaided recollection, later transferred to typewritten reports. Their continued failure to adopt the far more complete and accurate method of recording flies in the face of the experiences of detectives and supervisors from throughout the country. They have and routinely use the most sophisticated electronic devices in their investigations, but not in custodial settings when the agents have complete control of the surroundings and easy access to the equipment. In my opinion, it is inevitable that these agencies - and, for that matter, the balance of state law enforcement agencies - will adopt the use of electronic recordings of all custodial interrogations in felony investigations.

Part 4 recounts the positions announced by national organizations in support of electronic recording of custodial interviews.

Part 5 contains a listing of articles and books about electronic recording of custodial interviews.

Conclusion

 The Uniform Electronic Recordation of Custodial Interrogations Act, adopted in 2010 by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, is also available.

Related posts are in the custodial interrogation and false confessions indexes.

Texas Gaining National Rep for Executing Innocents

That's the title of Texas Observer Editor Dave Mann's take on the Columbia HRLR report, The Wrong Carlos.

Yes, it has come to this: Credible claims of innocence in multiple cases of men executed years ago. It’s becoming a disgrace for the state. What else can we say after the recent disturbing revelations in the case of Carlos DeLuna?

DeLuna was convicted of stabbing to death 24-year-old Wanda Lopez at a Corpus Christi convenience store in 1983. His conviction was based largely on the shaky testimony of a single eyewitness. Police had the eyewitness identify DeLuna at the crime scene while DeLuna was in custody—not ideal policing practice to say the least. No physical evidence linked him to the crime. Yet the state executed DeLuna in 1989. Now it appears they had the wrong man.

In 2003, Columbia University law professor James Liebman and a group of students began an eight-year reinvestigation of DeLuna’s case. Their results were recently published in a book-length Columbia Human Rights Law Review article.

And:

Texans have sadly grown accustomed to the horrifying tales of wrongful conviction after more than two dozen DNA exonerations in Dallas County and the high-profile cases of Anthony Graves and Michael Morton. But the DeLuna case is one of the most dispiriting yet. Though the details are different, what happened to DeLuna is eerily similar to the infamous Cameron Todd Willingham case and to the Claude Jones case. (If you’re not familiar with the Jones story, which the Observer broke in November 2010, then read this story. DNA tests debunked the key evidence against Jones, who was executed in 2000, though the tests didn’t conclusively establish his actual innocence.) Then there’s the case of Ruben Cantu, a former special ed student executed in 1993 for a crime he almost certainly didn’t commit.

"Carlos DeLuna, Cameron Willingham and Rethinking the Criminal Justice System," is Dan Simon's Huffington Post essay.  He's Professor of Law and Psychology at USC's Gould School of Law.  Here's the beginning:

Carlos DeLuna and Cameron Todd Willingham probably did not commit the crimes for which they were put to death by the state of Texas. In-depth inquiries into their convictions revealed bungled investigations, poor recordkeeping, mistaken eyewitness testimony, spurious forensic testimony and misconduct by law enforcement personnel, among other problems.

Sadly, the DeLuna and Willingham convictions are hardly isolated incidents. The National Registry of Exonerations, which launched this month, lists 890 men and women who were wrongfully convicted for serious crimes and spent, on average, more than 11 years in prison before being found factually innocent. That's not the complete story. The registry does not include an additional 1,170 people who were exonerated following large-scale police scandals. The actual number of false convictions is probably far greater.

At bottom, the primary cause for false convictions is the questionable quality of the evidence habitually used in criminal prosecutions. Poor evidence can be produced even when all actors follow procedures diligently and conscientiously. The problems lie with the investigative procedures themselves. Lineups, witness interviews, and suspect interrogations rely on crude and archaic investigative methods that are both insensitive to the prospect of human error and prone to exacerbate mistakes. As a result, the evidence elicited contains an unknown mix of accurate and inaccurate evidence.

Mystifyingly, criminal investigators are not required to make a reliable record of the evidence they collect. Verdicts are thus often based on faded memories, paraphrased statements, incomplete narratives and swearing contests about what transpired in the interrogation room. Hints of error are obscured from police supervisors and prosecutors, and they are concealed from lawyers, judges and juries. The lack of a reliable record opens the door to testimony creep -- as the trial date approaches, gaps in testimony get filled, narratives congeal, and reluctant witnesses become more confident.

The Catholic Sentinel posts, "Another innocent killed?"

America is one of the few remaining countries that allows its states to use the death penalty. For a state to kill people to demonstrate that killing people is wrong is crazy.

The Vatican and the U.S. bishops have spoken out against the death penalty.
Archbishop John Vlazny has called for an end to the death penalty in this newspaper.

“Human life is a gift from God, sacred from conception to natural death ,” he wrote last year.

In his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict asserted that “society lacks foundations when, on the one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially when it is weak or marginalized.”

Even as a deterrent to crime, the death penalty is not reliable. States with more executions do not generally have lower murder or crime rates.

The Story, an American Public Media radio broadcast, features an interview with Columbia Law prof James Liebman in, "Investigating an Execution."  It's conducted by Dick Gordon.  Audio is at the link.

Earlier coverage of Carlos DeLuna and the Columbia HRLR article begins at the link; also available, extensive coverage of the National Registry of Exonerations.  You can read the full article at The Wrong Carlos.

A Tragic Injustice

That's the title of an editorial in today's Buffalo News, subtitled, "New statistics should prod the state to act against wrongful convictions."  It begins today's roundup of coverage on the National Registry of Exonerations.

The problem of wrongful conviction is, we suspect, worse than most people ever thought. A new archive compiled at two universities shows that more than 2,000 people have been exonerated in the past 23 years after being falsely convicted of serious crimes. Those are only the ones who have been cleared. Who knows how many more are watching their lives slip away in prisons where they do not belong?

The problem of wrongful conviction is an under-appreciated catastrophe. Beyond the tragic unfairness of years lost behind bars is the financial and emotional impact on families and society and the hard fact that when the wrong person is in prison, the real criminal remains on the loose.

It would be one thing if nothing could be done about this problem, but there is plenty that can be done. New York just can’t bring itself to do it.

And:

New York combines one of the nation’s worst records on wrongful conviction—two recent cases occurred in Erie County—with one of the worst records at responding appropriately. It knows the problem and it knows what it needs to do. It just won’t do it.

Some of the measures supported by the Innocence Project in New York City, and adopted in other states, include changes in lineup procedures to diminish the frequency of misidentification by witnesses, and recording interrogations to guard against false confessions, an odd phenomenon that occurs with disturbing frequency.

New York’s resistance to reform goes largely unexplained, though some critics believe it is because many voters would perceive such measures as being unfriendly to police and of benefit to criminals. But the opposite is true.

Convicting the right person not only avoids putting innocent people in prison, but ensures that the real criminal isn’t out creating more victims.

"Registry tracks wrongful convictions," is the Lawrence Journal World report by Shaun Hittle.

Jordan Smith posts, "The Problem of Wrongful Conviction," at the Austin Chronicle.

Facing South, the website of the Institute for Southern Studies, posts, "Exonerations highlight criminal injustice in the South."

Earlier coverage of the Registry begins at the link.

Continued Coverage of the National Registry of Exonerations

The National Registry of Exonerations is beginning to garner editorials, and continuing to get focused attention.

"Hard truths about injustice," is the Dallas Morning News editorial.

Call it a graduate course on what can go wrong in the criminal justice system.

There are 891 case studies at present, and climbing.

That’s the number of individual cases listed so far in a new national project on cataloging and dissecting proven miscarriages of justice.

Called the National Registry of Exonerations, the project aims to build the first comprehensive listing of wrongful convictions in America so the public and professionals can learn the hard lesson of failure, then build a better system.

As with a similar, DNA-centered exoneration database maintained by the Innocence Project of New York, this one figures to be a good teacher. And Texas once again has an embarrassingly prominent presence.

So be it. This state needs to have its dirty laundry laid out as often as possible if that’s what it takes to overcome skepticism that things have been just fine the way they are inside Texas’ halls of justice. We know that’s not the case.

"A new National Registry on Exonerations casts doubt on the accuracy of our criminal justice system," is the title of a Birmingham News editorial.

How many people wrongfully convicted of a crime are we willing to accept? Especially those who are sentenced to Death Row?

A report released Monday by the National Registry on Exonerations raises those questions and more. The registry, a joint project of the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, profiles 873 exonerations from January 1989 through February 2012. The report discusses including at least 1,170 other defendants whose convictions were dismissed after more than a dozen major police scandals. Most of those scandals involved the massive planting of drugs and guns on innocent defendants, which led to "group exonerations."

And:

Of the 16 state exonerations in Alabama, six were men sentenced to death. It does not require a vivid imagination to wonder whether a wrongly convicted person awaits execution on Alabama's Death Row or, worse, whether the state has killed an innocent person in our names.

If someone goes to prison for a crime he or she did not commit, it is an injustice. That is especially true in capital murder cases, where a life is at stake. We would like to have as much confidence in Alabama's criminal justice system as Strange professes, but the report on the national registry casts enough doubt to cause grave concern.

The Week magazine bundles, "25 years of wrongful convictions: By the numbers."

891 - Specific wrongful conviction cases detailed in the National Registry of Exonerations

93 - Percent of the exonerated convicts who are men

50 - Percent who are black

10.7 - Average time, in years, from conviction to exoneration

10,000 - Combined time, in years, the 891 exonerated prisoners spent behind bars

2.3 million - People incarcerated in the U.S. 

1,170 - Convicted defendants cleared in 13 "group exonerations" since 1995, following large police-corruption scandals, usually involving planted drugs or guns

416 - People exonerated of wrongful homicide convictions

UMichigan Law prof Sam Gross, co-founder of the Registry, is interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered, "Exoneration List Shows Patterns In False Convictions."  It's conducted by NPR's Audie Cornish.

And, to start, Professor Gross, this registry contains information about, I guess, 2,000 exonerations since 1989, but do you know if that's really a comprehensive list?

SAMUEL GROSS: No, it's not. It's incomplete in two senses. It doesn't include all the exonerations that occurred. It includes those we've been able to get information on. And, second, and really more important, even if we could get information on all the exonerations that have occurred in the United States in the past 20-some years, that would only be a small fraction of the people who were innocent but convicted of serious crimes, despite their innocence.

CORNISH: So, of these 2,000 cases that you talk about, you have almost 900 cases, roughly, that you have the most detail about. And one thing I found interesting is that it wasn't DNA, necessarily, that exonerated all of these people.

GROSS: That's right. If you ask somebody on the street about exonerations, the next word out of their mouth will almost certainly be DNA and that's because DNA exonerations, which started in 1989, have gotten a lot of attention and for good reason. They've taught us a lot about the criminal justice system and they provide a type of scientific evidence of innocence that is very powerful.

But DNA exonerations have always been a minority of the exonerations that occur and the more we learn about exonerations that don't get as much attention, the more non-DNA exonerations we find out about.

Exoneree Franky Carrillo and Sam Gross were guests on MSNBC Politics Nation with Al Sharpton.  Carrillo spoke about his own experience with wrongful conviction and exonerations.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

At Huffington Post David Protess posts, "Meet the Exonerated."  He's president of the Chicago Innocence Project.

Other findings were more nuanced. Notably, exonerations were spread across 43 states, but were most prevalent by far in three states: Illinois, New York and Texas. These states together accounted for one-third of the country's exonerations. Cook County and Dallas County led the way with 114 exonerations between them.

But why? While the knee-jerk reaction is to shout "corruption," the reality is good news more than bad. As the researchers indicate, these areas have been at the forefront of the national innocence movement, with dedicated lawyers, investigators, journalists and even college students engaged in exposing wrongful convictions since the 1990s. In the last five years, the D.A. of Dallas County has remedied injustice in 19 cases, some in collaboration with the local innocence project.

It is reasonable to conclude that if the loosely affiliated public interest groups were to bring their model to populated counties like San Bernardino (Calif.), Fairfax (Va.) and Bergen (N.J.) -- none with an exoneration since 1989 -- the problem of wrongful convictions would suddenly surface.

Another relevant issue is the death penalty. Seven of the 10 states with the most exonerations also had among the highest death row populations. Although fewer than 0.1 percent of prisoners are sentenced to death, 12 percent of exonerees had been condemned. Once again, the death penalty has been a priority of the innocence movement, and many dramatic exonerations have helped to change the conversation about capital punishment in America.

Earlier coverage of the National Registry of Exonerations begins at the link.

Additional Coverage, The Wrong Carlos

Today's San Antonio Express-News carries the editorial, "DeLuna case shows flaws in system."

Many people assume that the more serious the criminal case is, the more meticulously it is investigated and prosecuted. If the state is going to send someone to prison for life or to the death chamber, it's often believed, the case against him must be rock solid.

As the increasing number of DNA exonerations demonstrates, that's not always so. According to the Innocence Project, 289 people have been exonerated of serious crimes in the United States on the basis of DNA evidence since 1989. Texas leads the nation with 44 such exonerations.

One involved Michael Blair, who served 14 years on death row before he was exonerated in 2008. The most recent involves Michael Morton, who served 25 years of a life sentence for the murder of his wife, while the actual murderer was free and went on — authorities believe — to commit a second murder.

Now an investigation by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review presents a compelling argument that the state of Texas put the wrong man to death in 1989 when it executed Carlos DeLuna for the murder of Corpus Christi convenience store clerk Wanda Lopez. The DeLuna case joins those of Cameron Willingham, Claude Jones and Ruben Cantu in offering strong evidence that deeply flawed death penalty cases get through the criminal justice system, with all its checks and balances and all its avenues of appeal.

And:

But if Texas is going to reserve the right to exact the ultimate sanction, the state's criminal justice system will have to do a better job of ensuring that those who end up on death row are actually guilty of their crimes.

Houston Chronicle columnist Patricia Kilday Hart writes, "Can't count on eyewitnesses to ID criminals."

"Why do journalists care so much about criminals?" That was the simple question posed in an email I recently found in my inbox. The author didn't tell me the grounds for her premise, but it arrived right after a column I had written about providing lawyers for poor people accused of crimes. I thought about the email this week after reading Chronicle reporter Allan Turner's story about Carlos DeLuna, who was executed by the state of Texas for a 1983 robbery-murder in Corpus Christi that he almost certainly did not commit.

And:

During the last session of the Texas Legislature, a bill by Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, was passed into law requiring the Law Enforcement Management Institute of Texas at Sam Houston State University to adopt a model policy for police lineups, to reduce the possibility of injecting error into the process.

The bill was recommended by the Timothy Cole Innocence Commission, named for a Texas Tech University student who was convicted of a rape he did not commit and died in prison of an asthma attack before he was exonerated by DNA evidence. The rape victim in the case was shown Cole's picture repeatedly until she selected it, and a police officer congratulated her for her selection.

Earlier this year, LEMIT finalized its model policy. Among the recommendations: Eyewitnesses should be shown suspects' photos one at a time, instead of all together. That, the experts say, reduces subconscious pressure to select a person who looks most like the criminal. Each suspect stands alone.

That's not how the Houston Police Department currently conducts photo lineups. According to a 2009 policy, photo spreads are shown to witnesses.

When LEMIT took testimony regarding its recommendations, Houston police Detective Mark Holloway argued there wasn't enough research to abandon photo spreads in favor of showing the photos sequentially (one-at-a-time) to witnesses.

But a prestigious think tank, the American Judicature Society, says otherwise. In a recent survey of research, the AJS concluded that "decades of laboratory research" show that the "sequential procedure reduces mistaken identifications with little or no reduction in accurate identifications."

Earlier coverage of Carlos DeLuna and the Columbia HRLR investigation begins at the link.  All coverage is in the Carlos DeLuna category index.

Continued Coverage of the National Registry of Exonerations

The National Registry of Exonerations is a great resource that's getting continued media attention.

CNN posts, "More than 2,000 wrongfully convicted people exonerated in 23 years, researchers say."  It has graphics and interactive components.

More than 2,000 people have been exonerated of serious crimes since 1989 in the United States, according to a report by college researchers who have established the first national registry of exonerations.

Researchers say their registry is the largest database of these types of cases and showcases some of the major issues with the criminal justice system, including that the leading causes of wrongful convictions are perjury, faulty witness identification and misconduct by prosecutors.

"No matter how tragic they are, even 2,000 exonerations over 23 years is a tiny number in a country with 2.3 million people in prisons and jails," says a report released by the authors. "If that were the extent of the problem we would be encouraged by these numbers. But it’s not. These cases merely point to a much larger number of tragedies that we do not know about."

Read the report (PDF) | Exonerations by state and county (PDF)

The registry itself, which looks deeply into 873 specific cases of wrongful conviction, examined cases based on court documents as well as from groups that have long documented wrongful convictions. That group of wrongfully convicted spent more than 10,000 total years in prison, according to the report, with an average of 11 years each.

"2000 and Growing: Revealing Statistics in Exoneration Study," is Ashby Jones' WSJ Law Blog post.

With increasing frequency, it seems, we get wind of DNA exonerations. Someone who’s served several years in prison gets released after DNA evidence either proves that he wasn’t at the scene of the crime — or puts someone else there in his stead.

It raises the question: Just how many exonerations (due to DNA evidence or otherwise) happen in the U.S.?

The answer, it turns out, is over 2,000 in the last 23 years, according to a study out Monday from the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University.

The study is part of a broader effort at the schools to build a registry of exonerations to chart just how often it happens, and in what contexts.  “It used to be that almost all the exonerations we knew about were murder and rape cases. We’re finally beginning to see beyond that,” said Michigan Law professor Samuel Gross, editor of the registry and an author of the report.

"National Registry Of Exonerations: More Than 2,000 People Freed After Wrongful Convictions," by Michael McLaughlin at Huffington Post.

Some tales of wrongful conviction are well known, like the case of amateur boxer Dewey Bozella.

Bozella was found guilty in 1983 for the murder of an elderly woman. New York police and prosecutors pressed second-degree murder charges propped up by the testimony of witnesses who eventually recanted their testimony. It wasn't until 2007 that Bozella's attorneys discovered major discrepancies and evidence pointing to another suspect, leading to Bozella's release in 2009.

But many stories involving tainted evidence, malingering law enforcement and mistaken eyewitness identification never become common knowledge. The cases outlined on the new National Registry of Exonerations are likely just a fraction of the wrongful imprisonment cases in the United States, researchers told The Huffington Post.

More than 2,000 inmates and ex-cons have been exonerated since 1989, according to the database that aims to track all wrongful convictions in the United States. More than 100 had been sentenced to death.

"This is a beginning," said University of Michigan Law School professor Samuel Gross, one of the database's creators. "One of my great hopes is that this will lead us to learn more about exonerations."

The database, which was developed with members of Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Conviction, focused on 873 individual cases. The researchers also identified 13 major police scandals that falsely netted 1,170 other people, although these are not included in the database because they are the results of a collective exoneration based on problems in individual agencies.

"Texas Among Top 3 States in Total Exonerations," is by Brandi Grissom and Ryan Murphy for the Texas Tribune.  The report contains a list of all Texas exonerees on the Registry.

The report's lead authors said the project is an unprecedented examination of the scope of wrongful convictions that shows they are far more prevalent than once thought. In Texas, according to the report, there have been 87 exonerations involving crimes ranging from robbery to murder. Only Illinois, with 110, and New York, with 88, had more.

“It used to be that almost all the exonerations we knew about were murder and rape cases. We’re finally beginning to see beyond that,” Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, editor of the registry and an author of the report, said in a news release. “This is a sea change.”

The report, which includes an online searchable database with details on about nearly 900 of the exonerations, details for the first time wrongful convictions in 58 cases involving drugs, taxes, white-collar and other nonviolent crimes; 102 exonerations for child sex abuse convictions; and 129 exonerations of defendants who were convicted of crimes that never happened.

The authors created a separate category for group exonerations, which includes cases of massive law enforcement corruption in Dallas and in Tulia that led to more than 40 exonerations.

The authors note, however, that their work does not encompass all of the wrongful convictions that have happened in the last two decades. Many more cases, they wrote, are probably undiscovered as the wrongfully convicted remain behind bars, die in prison or lack the money to prove their innocence.

They point to the numbers. For instance, in Dallas County, with about 2.4 million people, there have been 36 exonerations. Meanwhile, Bexar County, where the population exceeds 1.7 million, has had none.

"No matter how tragic they are, even 2,000 exonerations over 23 years is a tiny number in a country with 2.3 million people in prisons and jails. If that were the extent of the problem we would be encouraged by these numbers. But it’s not. These cases merely point to a much larger number of tragedies that we do not know about," the report states.

David A. Love writes, "How America's death penalty murders innocents," for the Guardian's Comment Is Free.  He's the executive director of Witness to Innocence.

The US criminal justice system is a broken machine that wrongfully convicts innocent people, sentencing thousands of people to prison or to death for the crimes of others, as a new study reveals. The University of Michigan law school and Northwestern University have compiled a new National Registry of Exonerations – a database of over 2,000 prisoners exonerated between 1989 and the present day, when DNA evidence has been widely used to clear the names of innocent people convicted of rape and murder. Of these, 885 have profiles developed for the registry's website, exonerationregistry.org.

The details are shocking. Death row inmates were exonerated nine times more frequently than others convicted of murder. One-fourth of those exonerated of murder had received a death sentence, while half of those who had been wrongfully convicted of rape or murder faced death or a life behind bars. Ten of the inmates went to their grave before their names were cleared.

The leading causes of wrongful convictions include perjury, flawed eyewitness identification and prosecutorial misconduct. For those who have placed unequivocal faith in the US criminal justice system and believe that all condemned prisoners are guilty of the crime of which they were convicted, the data must make for a rude awakening.

"The most important thing we know about false convictions is that they happen and on a regular basis … Most false convictions never see the light of the day," said University of Michigan law professors Samuel Gross and Michael Shaffer, who wrote the study.

"Nobody had an inkling of the serious problem of false confessions until we had this data," said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University. 

The unveiling of the exoneration registry comes days after a groundbreaking study from Columbia law school Professor James Liebman and 12 students. Published in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, the study describes how Texas executed an innocent man named Carlos DeLuna in 1989. DeLuna was put to death for the 1983 murder of Wanda Lopez, a young woman, at a gas station. Carlos Hernandez, who bragged about committing the murder and bore a striking resemblance to DeLuna, was named at trial by DeLuna's defence team as the actual perpetrator of the crime. But DeLuna's false conviction is merely the tip of the iceberg, as the database suggests.

Earlier coverage of the National Registry of Exonerations begins at the link.

Initial News Coverage of the National Registry of Exonerations

Here are links to extensive news coverage of the National Registry of Exonerations.

"Study: 2,000 convicted then exonerated in 23 years," is the AP report filed by Pete Yost.  It's via the Pioneer Press.

More than 2,000 people who were falsely convicted of serious crimes have been exonerated in the United States in the past 23 years, according to a new archive compiled at two universities.

There is no official record-keeping system for exonerations of convicted criminals in the country, so academics set one up. The new national registry, or database, painstakingly assembled by the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, is the most complete list of exonerations ever compiled.

The database compiled and analyzed by the researchers contains information on 873 exonerations for which they have the most detailed evidence. The researchers are aware of nearly 1,200 other exonerations, for which they have less data.

They found that those 873 exonerated defendants spent a combined total of more than 10,000 years in prison, an average of more than 11 years each. Nine out of 10 of them are men and half are African-American.

Nearly half of the 873 exonerations were homicide cases, including 101 death sentences. Over one-third of the cases were sexual assaults.

DNA evidence led to exoneration in nearly one-third of the 416 homicides and in nearly two-thirds of the 305 sexual assaults.

Researchers estimate the total number of felony convictions in the United States is nearly a million a year.

The overall registry/list begins at the start of 1989. It

gives an unprecedented view of the scope of the problem of wrongful convictions in the United States and the figure of more than 2,000 exonerations "is a good start," said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions.

"We know there are many more that we haven't found," added University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, the editor of the newly opened National Registry of Exonerations.

"Proven innocent after proven guilty," by Carlyn Kolker for ReutersLegal.

Exoneration. It is one of the most redeeming concepts in the American legal system -- the possibility that the justice system will liberate a person who was falsely convicted of a crime. But it is of course also one of the most terrifying aspects of that same system, predicated on the existence of actual failures.

The National Registry of Exonerations, formally inaugurated today by the University of Michigan and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern, contains nearly 900 examples of that paradox. The stories, of everyone from white collar defendants to convicted murderers, focus on how these criminal defendants were convicted, and then, thanks to DNA evidence and re-canted testimony, among other things, were subsequently released, sometimes decades after their convictions.

The list dates from 1989 to the present and includes 885 examples from both federal court and state courts around the country. It is something of an information-gathering feat: No authoritative data base on exonerations already exists, and information on individual cases is scattered across a range of different sources, according to Samuel Gross, the University of Michigan law professor who made the registry.

The "easy" cases to identify were ones already investigated by non-profit legal groups such as the Innocence Project, which focuses on exonerating wrongfully-convicted defendants in death-penalty cases. But beyond that, Gross and his assistants (he had about 18 helpers, some volunteer, some part-time) scoured the Internet, newspapers, state and federal court records and interviewed attorneys to come up with the list of defendants across the country - most cases occurred in state courts - about whom they could gather proof that they'd been exonerated for crimes they didn't commit.

"Wrongful convictions shine spotlight on judicial system," by Kevin Johnson, USA Today.

Perjury, faulty eyewitness identification and prosecutorial misconduct are the leading reasons for wrongful convictions, according to the first national registry of exonerations compiled by university researchers.

The database, assembled in a collaboration by the University of Michigan and Northwestern University, has identified 873 faulty convictions in the past 23 years that have been recognized by prosecutors, judges or governors.

The registry's founders say the numbers, which do not include many cases in which innocent suspects plead guilty to avoid the risk of more serious punishments or cases that have been dismissed because of legal error without new evidence of innocence, represent only a fraction of the problem in the nation's criminal justice system.

"What this shows is that the criminal justice system makes mistakes, and they are more common than people think," said University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, the registry's editor. "It is not the rule, but we won't learn to get better unless we pay attention to these cases."

Despite the data, the registry concluded that the "overwhelming majority of convicted defendants are guilty."

"New national registry lists exonerations from wrongful convictions," is by Michael Doyle for McClatchy Newspapers.  It's via the Miami Herald.

Obie Anthony served hard time in California prisons for a crime he didn't commit.

He's not alone, and he's not forgotten. Anthony is one of nearly 900 exonerated former prisoners whose wrenching stories are wrapped into a new database. The National Registry of Exonerations, formally unveiled Monday, is the largest of its kind, and it will get bigger over time.

"This is useful, because if we want to prevent false convictions, we have to learn how we make mistakes," Samuel Gross, a University of Michigan Law School professor, said in an interview.

Gross is the editor of the registry, a joint project of the Michigan law school and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. By compiling detailed information about an initial 891 exonerations that have been identified since 1989, the organizers say they already have begun to identify disturbing patterns.

Perjury from witnesses was found to be the biggest problem for those wrongfully convicted of murder, the database shows. Mistakes by eyewitnesses are almost always the cause of wrongful rape convictions. In either case, the consequences are severe. About half of the exonerated individuals had been in prison for at least 10 years; 75 percent served five years or more.

"Registry tallies over 2,000 wrongful convictions since 1989," by David G. Savage for the Los Angles Times and the Tribune News Service.

The registry covers the period since DNA came into common use and revealed, to the surprise of many prosecutors and judges, that a significant number of convicted rapists and murderers were innocent. The Innocence Project in New York says DNA alone has freed 289 prisoners since 1989.

Criminal law experts have been studying the growing number of exonerations. Some cases have involved police corruption or witnesses who recanted. Experts have also pointed to faulty eyewitness testimony and lying witnesses as common problems.

Beyond that, a surprising number of cases involved suspects who confessed to crimes they didn't commit.

"Nobody had an inkling of the serious problem of false confessions until we had this data," said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University. Under persistent and prolonged questioning by investigators, some suspects confessed to crimes such as rape, even though DNA later revealed they were not the perpetrators.

Among the states, Illinois has the most exonerations listed in the new registry, and among counties, Cook County and Chicago led the way, followed by Dallas and Los Angeles. However, the sponsors of the new registry do not contend that their data permits strong comparisons across counties or states because only about 900 of the cases were examined in detail by jurisdiction.

"It's clear that the exonerations we found are the tip of the iceberg," Gross said.

"Researchers: More than 2,000 false convictions in past 23 years," by Elizabeth Chuck at MSNBC.

There is also regional coverage of the report.  "National study tracks number of people falsely convicted of crime," is by Tracey Kaplan for the Silicon Valley Mercury News.

"Report breaks down wrongful convictions," by  Alan Johnson for the Columbus Dispatch.

"New national registry details wrongful convictions," by Paul Purpura for the New Orleans Times-Picayune

National Registry of Exonerations

Today, the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law launched the first National Registry of Exonerations.  ExonerationRegistry.org represents the largest collection of such cases ever assembled and it will be continually updated.

The purpose of studying exonerations is to learn how to prevent and correct false convictions.

The Registry front page contains the report, Exonerations in the United States, 1989 – 2012.  You can also read an executive summary of the report.  The Registry contains a searchable, sortable database of exoneration.  You can view exonerations by state and by county.

News coverage of the National Registry of Exonerations in the next post.

Current Research Not Sufficient to Assess Deterrent Effect of the Death Penalty

That's the title of a news release issued by the National Research Council announcing a major study capital punishment and deterrence.  Here's the full text of the news release:

Research to date on the effect of capital punishment on homicide rates is not useful in determining whether the death penalty increases, decreases, or has no effect on these rates, says a new report from the National Research Council.  The committee that wrote the report evaluated studies conducted since a four-year moratorium on the death penalty was lifted in 1976, and it found that the studies do not provide evidence for or against the proposition that the death penalty affects homicide rates.  These studies should not be used to inform judgments about the effect of the death penalty on homicide, and should not serve as a basis for policy decisions about capital punishment, the committee said.

The lack of evidence about the deterrent effect of capital punishment -- whether it is positive, negative, or zero -- should not be construed as favoring one argument over another, the report stresses.  "Fundamental flaws in the research we reviewed make it of no use in answering the question of whether the death penalty affects homicide rates," said Daniel S. Nagin, Teresa and H. John Heinz III University Professor of Public Policy and Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, and chair of the committee that wrote the report. "We recognize that this conclusion may be controversial to some, but no one is well-served by unsupportable claims about the effect of the death penalty, regardless of whether the claim is that the death penalty deters homicides, has no effect on homicide rates or actually increases homicides."

The key question, the report says, is whether capital punishment is less or more effective as a deterrent than alternative punishments, such as a life sentence without the possibility of parole.  Yet none of the research that has been done accounted for the possible effect of noncapital punishments on homicide rates.

The committee also found that studies made implausible or unsupported assumptions about potential murderers' perceptions of and response to capital punishment.  Many studies did not address how perceptions are formed and simply inferred that potential murderers respond to the objective risk of execution. This inference ignores the fact that determining the objective risk poses great complexities even for a well-informed researcher, let alone a potential murderer.  For instance, only 15 percent of people who have been sentenced to death since 1976 have actually been executed, and a large fraction of death sentences are reversed.  Furthermore, estimates of the deterrent effect of the death penalty were based on unfounded assumptions, for example, that the effect of capital punishment is the same across all the states and over time.  There is no evidence to support such suppositions.

These intrinsic shortcomings severely limit what can be learned from the existing research, the report says.  The committee recommended next steps for research that include collecting data that consider both capital and noncapital punishments for murder, conducting studies on how potential murderers perceive a range of punishments in homicide cases, and using statistical methods based on more credible assumptions about the effect of capital punishment on homicide rates.

The ultimate success of the research may depend on the specific questions being addressed, the report adds.  Questions of interest include if and how the legal status or intensity of use of the death penalty affects homicide rates or whether executions affect these Rrates in the short term.  The report acknowledged that new data and knowledge may not come quickly or easily, but such research may help to provide insight into the crime prevention effects of noncapital punishment that could be useful for future policy decisions.

The committee was not asked and did not investigate the moral arguments for or against capital punishment, the empirical evidence on whether capital punishment is administered in a nondiscriminatory and consistent fashion, or the cost of its administration.

The study was sponsored by Tides Foundation, the Proteus Action League, and the National Institute of Justice.  The National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council make up the National Academies.  They are private, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology, and health policy advice under a congressional charter.  The Research Council is the principal operating agency of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.

The members of the NRC review committee are listed on the release, as well as other information.

Prepublication information for Deterrence and the Death Penalty is also available.

Here'a roundup of the initial news coverage:

"Report: Deterrent effect of death penalty unclear," is the AP filing.  It's also available from ABC News and CBS News.

A new report says there is no reliable research on whether the death penalty has any effect on the murder rate, more than 35 years since the Supreme Court allowed the resumption of executions in the United States.

The National Research Council report says all the studies on the possible deterrent effect of the death penalty suffer from fundamental flaws. The report identifies problems that include not taking account of the effects of alternatives to death sentences or insufficiently weighing how killers assess the risk of execution.

The authors of the new report say they are disappointed to reach the same conclusion as a 1978 study. They say their evaluation of the existing research does not favor either side in the long-running debate about deterrence and the death penalty.

"Does the Death Penalty Deter Crime? Studies are Inconclusive," at National Journal.

We still don’t know enough about whether the death penalty works to deter crime, and policymakers should ignore research that claims to say whether it does, the National Academy of Sciences said on Wednesday.

A panel of experts appointed by the independent, nonprofit academy reviewed more than 30 years of research done since the 1976 Supreme Court decision that reinstated the death penalty as constitutional.

“The studies have reached widely varying, even contradictory, conclusions. Some studies conclude that executions save large numbers of lives; others conclude that executions actually increase homicides; and still others conclude that executions have no effect on homicide rate,” according to the academy panel, chaired by Daniel Nagin, an expert in criminology and statistics at Carnegie Mellon University.

And:

The report turns up some interesting facts – for instance, only 15 percent of people who have been sentenced to death since 1976 have actually been executed.

"NRC: Death penalty effect research 'fundamentally flawed'," by Dan Vergano at USA Today.

Does the death penalty deter murderers? Criminology offers no answers, despite more than three decades of research, concludes an expert panel, reviewing studies of the deterrence effects of capital punishment.

In 1976, the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty as the law of the land. Since then, 1,234 people have been executed in U.S. prisons, where 35 states apply the death penalty.

So, does it help lower the homicide rate? Who knows. Research looking into links between capital punishment and murder rates is "fundamentally flawed," concludes a National Research Council panel led by criminologist Daniel Nagin of Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

"One major deficiency in all the existing studies is that none specify the non-capital sanction components of the sanction regime for the punishment of homicide," says the panel's just-released report, such as life imprisonment. As well, "incomplete or implausible models of potential murderers' perceptions," confound the studies, making them suspect.

"We recognize this conclusion will be controversial to some, but nobody is well served by unfounded claims about the death penalty," Nagin said, in a telephone briefing for reporters. "Nothing is known about how potential murderers actually perceive their risk of punishment."

Related posts are in the deterrence category index.

Nevada Cost Study

The Las Vegas Sun reports, "Study lays out costs associated with death penalty in Nevada."  It's written by Gregan Wingert.

The ACLU of Nevada recently highlighted a study conducted by a UNLV professor who found that defending the death penalty in Clark County costs at least $170,000 more than defending cases where life in prison is sought.

Terance Miethe, of UNLV's department of criminal justice, began the study in January and determined that the 80 pending capital murder cases in Clark County will cost approximately $20 million, according to the report.

Miethe's research estimates that public defense attorneys have spent double the time, about 2,300 hours, on capital murder cases as opposed to non-capital murder cases, the report says.

According to the study, 35 cases resulting in the death sentence between 2009 and 2011 took, on average, more than three years to complete. The study concluded that life with parole and life without parole cases took 2 to 2 1/2 years, respectively.

The ACLU of Nevada issued a press release, "Study on Murder Cases in Clark County Completed."  Here's the release text:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada thanks Dr. Terance Miethe of the Department of Criminal Justice, University of Nevada—Las Vegas, for conducting a study on defense attorney time spent on murder cases in Clark County, and also Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani for having commissioned the study by Dr. Miethe. Dr. Miethe observes that defense costs associated with capital cases are $170,000 to $212,000 higher than in those cases where the death penalty is not sought.

ACLU welcomes the insights provided by Dr. Miethe, but cautions that the information provides only a necessary first step in analysis. It is critically important that the full array of costs associated with the death penalty be examined.

This study, dated Feb. 21 but not obtained by the ACLU of Nevada until April 4, provides an independent reference point for discussions about priorities, staffing, and funding of Clark County District Attorney’s office, and provides some harder numbers in place of estimates given to the Clark County Commission by former District Attorney David Roger in early 2011. However, as concerning as some of these numbers might be—such as the estimate of $20 million to handle 80 pending capital murder cases—the study was based on a survey of only 22 defense attorneys. The study also correctly points out, on page 7, its own substantial limitations: “It is important to note that this statistical extrapolation does not cover the full array of time spent in capital cases by other court officials (e.g. judges, prosecutors, jurors), staff and administrative personnel, mitigation specialists, investigators, and expert witnesses. It also does not take into account the additional costs of capital litigation that are associated with state/federal appeals and the extra costs of imprisonment of death-eligible inmates pending trial and sentencing.”

Thus, Dr. Miethe also states on page 7: “Given these major omissions in the present analysis, a more comprehensive study is required for estimating the overall costs and benefits of capital litigation in this jurisdiction across all groups involved in the criminal processing and adjudication of these cases.”

In the 2011 Nevada Legislature, the commission of a statewide cost study on the death penalty was passed by the Assembly and the Senate, only to be vetoed by Gov. Sandoval, who said he did not think the bill was specific enough to ensure that such a study would be “reliable” and “fair.” This seems to have overlooked the fact that death penalty cost studies have been performed nationwide (Nevada could simply replicate the methodology of the best study[s] performed in other states) and that the state government employs numerous experienced and highly trained accountants, auditors, economists, and attorneys.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada will be back in the 2013 Legislature again advocating for a moratorium on the death penalty in Nevada, which was originally part of the 2011 bill but was amended out, and the kind of comprehensive cost study that now has also been called for by Dr. Miethe.

The complete study, "Estimates of Time Spent in Capital and Non-Capital Murder Cases: A Statistical Analysis of Survey Data from Clark County Defense Attorneys," and the Executive Summary are available in Adobe .pdf format from the ACLU of Nevada.

Cost has been an issue in Nevada in the past.  Related posts are in the cost index.

Ohio AG Issues Annual Capital Crimes Report

"Ohio has sentenced 313 to death since 1981," is the AP filing, via the Canton Repository.

An annual report on Ohio’s capital punishment system says 313 defendants have been sentenced to death since the state’s death penalty law took effect in 1981, with 46 executions.

The report says 16 inmates were spared by governors and another 22 died of natural causes while on death row.

The report released Friday by Attorney General Mike DeWine also says eight inmates were ruled ineligible for execution because they were mentally disabled and eight were set for resentencing, which could include another death sentence.

The report says 71 death sentences were thrown out by judges for reasons besides mental disability or resentencing.

Ohio, with 146 men and one woman on death row, is in the midst of an unofficial execution moratorium while a federal judge reviews state lethal injection procedures.

The Ohio Attorney General's 2011 Capital Crimes Annual Report is available in Adobe .pdf format. 

Earlier coverage from Ohio begins at the link.  In addition to continued lethal injection controversies, the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court is currently presiding over a Joint Task Force to Study Administration of the Death Penalty in the state. 

Study: Prosecutors Not Disciplined for Misconduct

That's the title of Brandi Grissom's Texas Tribune post on a forum on prosecutorial misconduct held yesterday tat UT Law.

In 91 criminal cases in Texas since 2004, the courts decided that prosecutors committed misconduct, ranging from hiding evidence to making improper arguments to the jury, according to data that the Innocence Project will release today.

None of those prosecutors has ever been disciplined.

“It paints a bleak picture about what’s going on with accountability and prosecutors,” said Cookie Ridolfi, founder of the Northern California Innocence Project, who researched misconduct data in Texas and other states.

At a symposium today at the University of Texas at Austin, exonerees Michael Morton of Texas and John Thompson of Louisiana, along with lawyers and legal scholars, will discuss the need for increased accountability for prosecutors nationally and in Texas. The symposium is part of a national accountability campaign by the New York-based Innocence Project.

And:

“There’s no disincentive for a prosecutor to do it unless he or she has an internal moral code themselves,” Ridolfi said. In a study of California cases, her organization reported that from 1997 to 2009, courts found 707 instances of prosecutorial misconduct. There were just six instances in which prosecutors were disciplined.

As more inmates are being freed based on DNA evidence, Ridolfi said, more cases of misconduct are being identified. Although it is often the same prosecutors who repeatedly engage in misconduct, she said, the problem reflects poorly on the entire justice system.

“It’s basically bringing down the integrity of all the district attorneys’ offices,” she said.

In Texas, Ridolfi said, she found only one instance in which a prosecutor was publicly disciplined, and it took place before the time period her group studied. Terry McEachern, who prosecuted the infamous Tulia drug cases in which black defendants were convicted of drug charges concocted by a rogue investigator, received a two-year probated suspension of his law license in 2005 and a $6,225 fine.

"New Research Illustrates Lack of Accountability for Prosecutors in Texas," is the news release issued by the Innocence Project and Prosecutorial Oversight.  Here's the beginning:

New research released today by the Prosecutorial Oversight coalition illustrates the lack of accountability and transparency for prosecutorial misconduct in Texas. The research will be addressed at a symposium today at the University of Texas School of Law that will include panelists with backgrounds from all aspects of the criminal justice system addressing systemic and legal approaches for reducing prosecutorial error and misconduct.

The Austin event marks the second stop on a national tour organized by the Prosecutorial Oversight coalition, which includes the death row exoneree John Thompson, who was stripped of $14 million in civil damages for prosecutorial misconduct by the U.S. Supreme Court in Connick v. Texas; the Innocence Project; the Veritas Initiative, Northern California Innocence Project’s prosecutorial accountability program; the Innocence Project of New Orleans; Voices of Innocence; and local partners, the Texas Center for Actual Innocence; and the Actual Innocence Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law.

“No one is disputing that prosecutors have tremendous responsibility, and the vast majority do a good job under difficult circumstances.  But now that the Supreme Court has given prosecutors almost complete immunity for their actions, we need to develop systems of accountability for dealing with those prosecutors who violate their ethical obligations,” said Jennifer Laurin, Assistant Professor, University of Texas School of Law.

The research released today was conducted by the Veritas Initiative, which issued a groundbreaking report on prosecutorial misconduct in California last year.  The group reviewed all of the published trial and appellate court decisions addressing allegations of prosecutorial misconduct between 2004-2008. To see what, if any, consequences prosecutors face for their misconduct, Veritas looked at Texas’ public attorney disciplinary records from 2004 to November 2011.

From 2004 to 2008, courts found that prosecutors committed error in 91 cases.  Of these, the courts upheld the conviction in 72 of the cases, finding that the error was “harmless.”  In 19 of the cases, the court ruled that the error was “harmful” and reversed the conviction.  From 2004 until November 2011, only one prosecutor was publicly disciplined by the Texas Bar Association, and this was from a case that arose before 2004.

There's much more at Prosecutorial Oversight.  Earlier coverage of the cases of Michael Morton and John Thompson begins at the links.  Related posts are in the prosecutorial misconduct index.

Amnesty International Report on Capital Punishment

 Death Sentences and Executions 2011 is the annual report issued by Amnesty International.

At least 20 countries were known to have carried out executions in 2011. Even including newly-independent South Sudan, this is a reduction from 2010, when 23 countries were reported to have implemented death sentences, and shows a steep decline against the figure recorded a decade ago, when 31 countries were known to have carried out executions.

At least 676 executions were known to have been carried out worldwide in 2011, an increase on the 2010 figure of at least 527 executions worldwide. The increase is largely due to a significant increase in judicial killings in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. However, the 676 figure does not include the thousands of people who were believed to have been executed in China in 2011.

CBS News posts, "Amnesty: US ranks 5th on global execution scale."

The United States was the only Western democracy that executed prisoners last year, even as an increasing number of U.S. states are moving to abolish the death penalty, Amnesty International announced Monday.

America's 43 executions in 2011 ranked it fifth in the world in capital punishment, the rights group said in its annual review of worldwide death penalty trends. U.S. executions were down from 46 a year earlier.

"If you look at the company we're in globally, it's not the company we want to be in: China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq," Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA, told The Associated Press.

The United States seems deeply divided on the issue.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry was cheered at a Republican presidential candidates' debate last September when he defended his signature on 234 execution warrants over more than 10 years as being the "ultimate justice."

Just weeks later, young people rallied in person and online to protest the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia for the 1991 murder of a police officer. In the intervening years, key witnesses for the prosecution had recanted or changed their stories.

"I think the debate on the issue may be nearing a tipping point in this country," Nossel said. "I think we're seeing momentum at the state level, in the direction of waning support for the death penalty."

Illinois banned the death penalty last year, and Oregon adopted a moratorium on executions.

"Amnesty: Mideast executions boost 2011 global toll," is the AP coverage of the report.  It's written by Peter James Spielmann, via the Boston Globe.

A surge of executions last year in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen pushed the worldwide total higher than the year before, the global anti-death penalty group Amnesty International announced Monday.

The United States remains near the top of the global list of nations carrying out executions, ranked fifth.

Although the global rate of executions has declined by about a third in the past decade, to 676 documented worldwide in 2011, some 18,750 people remained on death row at the end of the year in 20 nations, Amnesty International said in its annual review of worldwide trends.

"We do not believe that governments should be in the business of executing citizens. That's an inappropriate role for the government to play, regardless of the circumstances," Suzanne Nossel, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, told The Associated Press.

Various countries subject a wide array of crimes to capital punishment, including adultery, sodomy and religious offenses such as apostasy or "treason against God" in Iran, blasphemy in Pakistan, "sorcery" in Saudi Arabia, trafficking in human bones in the Republic of Congo, and economic crimes in China including selling fake drugs or tainted foods or soliciting deceptive organ transplantation.

China executes thousands of people annually, many more than the rest of the world put together. Figures are a state secret, Amnesty International said, and it has stopped compiling them from public sources because those numbers lead to underreporting and a gross underestimate of the true total.

"Executions jump in 2011, driven by Middle East: Amnesty," from Reuters by Adrian Croft.  It's via the Chicago Tribune.

The number of executions carried out around the world jumped last year, largely due to a surge in use of the death penalty in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, Amnesty International said on Tuesday.

The rights group said at least 676 people were executed in 20 countries in 2011 compared with 527 executions in 23 countries in 2010, a 28 percent increase.

Confirmed executions in the Middle East rose by almost 50 percent last year to 558, it said in an annual report on the death penalty.

Methods of execution used around the world included beheading, hanging, lethal injection and shooting.

However, Amnesty said China executed more people than the rest of the world put together. Data on the death penalty in China is a state secret and Amnesty International no longer publishes a figure for Chinese executions, but it said they were in the thousands.

Salil Shetty, Amnesty's secretary-general, said that when Amnesty was launched in 1961 only nine countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes, whereas last year only 20 countries carried out executions.

"It's a very important success story," he told Reuters, adding that the downside was that "a few countries continue to practice it in large numbers."

At least 1,923 people are known to have been sentenced to death in 63 countries in 2011, down from 2,024 in 2010, Amnesty's report said. At least 18,750 people were under sentence of death worldwide at the end of 2011, including 8,300 in Pakistan, it said.

"Map: Nations that used the death penalty last year," at the Los Angeles Times.

Most countries do not put criminals to death. Only 20 out of 198 carried out executions last year. That number has dropped by more than a third over the past decade. Many nations have abolished the death penalty and more are abolitionist in practice.

"We are determined that we will see the day when the death penalty is consigned to history," said Salil Shetty, secretary general of Amnesty International.

At least 676 people were executed across the globe last year for crimes including sorcery, sodomy and murder, according to a new annual report from the group. Executions rose steeply in the Middle East and North Africa, up almost 50% compared to the previous year.

The United States was the only Western country to carry out an execution last year, though death sentences are rarer than a decade ago. Sixteen states have now abolished capital punishment, most recently Illinois, where a lengthy campaign drew attention to errors in the criminal justice system.

Amnesty posted, "‘Don’t let those who kill turn us into murderers’."  For anyone who does not know Renny Cushing's story, it's a must-read.

One warm June evening in 1988, Robert Cushing and his wife Marie were at home watching a basketball game on TV, when they were interrupted by a knock.

As the retired New Hampshire school teacher answered the front door of the house where he and Marie had raised their seven children, two shots rang out, ripping his chest apart.

He died instantly in front of his wife.

Later that night, a police officer broke the news of his father’s murder to then 34-year-old Renny Cushing, who had visited his parents less than an hour before the shooting.

“For me, at that moment, thinking about what you do in the aftermath of murder stopped being an intellectual exercise and became part of my life,” says Renny Cushing, speaking to Amnesty International from the house where his father was murdered. Renny now lives there with his wife and three daughters.

For some, the instinct after losing a loved one to murder might be to want to see the perpetrators executed.

But since his father's death, Renny Cushing has become a leading voice against the death penalty, travelling throughout the USA. and Asia speaking with and on behalf of victims who oppose capital punishment.

AIUSA also posted, "The Death Penalty In 2011: Three Things You Should Know," by Brian Evans.

Every year around this time, Amnesty International releases its annual survey of capital punishment worldwide.

As in previous years, the report – Death Sentences and Execution 2011 – shows that support for executions continued to diminish, and that the U.S. is in the wrong company but moving in the right direction. There are three main takeaways from this years report.

1. Globally, the use of the death penalty remained in decline.  At the end of 2011 there were 140 countries considered abolitionist in law or practice (it’s now 141 with the addition of Mongolia), while only 20 countries were known to have put prisoners to death.  Only in the tumultuous Middle East was there an increase in executions.

2. The United States stayed in its dubiously bad place on this fundamental human rights issue. The U.S. was the only country in the Western hemisphere or the G8 to kill its prisoners, and was responsible for the fifth most known executions in the world, behind China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. (As an independent country, Texas would have ranked 7th, between North Korea and Somalia, with its 13 executions in 2011.)

3. On the other hand, there were unmistakable signs of a substantially reduced enthusiasm for the death penalty in the U.S. In March, Illinois become the 16th state to abolish the death penalty, and in November, Oregon’s Governor declared a moratorium on executions.  Nationwide, executions were down slightly (43 compared to 46 in 2010), and death sentences were way down (78 compared to 104 in 2010 and 158 on 2001).  The execution of Troy Davis in September was accompanied by an unprecedented outpouring of opposition, and a Gallup poll showed support for the death penalty at its lowest ebb since 1972.

More on the Stevens Case & Prosecutorial Misconduct

Today's New York Times also publishes the editorial, "Justice After Senator Stevens."

The Department of Justice has acknowledged pervasive prosecutorial misconduct in the corruption trial of the late Senator Ted Stevens. It needs to take an even closer look at the powers and responsibilities of its prosecutors, after a scathing new report on the case by a court-appointed investigator.

The obligation of prosecutors to disclose evidence favorable to their adversaries is a cornerstone of justice. Yet in the conviction of Senator Stevens in 2008, vital evidence was concealed that would have “seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government’s key witness,” according to the finding of Henry Schuelke, who conducted a two-and-a-half-year investigation.

And:

The Justice Department has intensified training of prosecutors on exculpatory policy. They are still allowed to decide what is “material” — a glaring temptation for concealment. The department should set a national standard by joining state and local governments that have adopted open-file requirements for prosecutors to be far more forthcoming about evidence favoring the defense. That is the only fitting postscript to the Stevens debacle.

Coverage of the Schuelke report begins at the link.  Related posts are in the prosecutorial misconduct index.

Diminishing All of Us

That's the title of a new document issued by the Catholic Mobilizing Network.  It's subtitled, "The Death Penalty in Louisiana."

A Study for Louisiana Catholics Committed to Repeal of the Death Penalty, Co-Authored by Alex Mikulich and Sophie Cull

Louisiana Catholics Committed to Repeal of the Death Penalty and the Jesuit Social Research Institute have collaborated on a study that addresses the death penalty through a Roman Catholic theological lens – aiming to “demonstrate the ineffectiveness and arbitrariness of our death penalty system as a public policy, including the ways it is unfairly administered across racial, social and economic lines.” The study – co-authored by Alex Mikulich of Louisiana Catholics Committed to Repeal of the Death Penalty and Sophie Cull of the Louisiana Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty – gathers the results of all qualitative and quantitative Louisiana-focused studies related to the administration of the death penalty into a single collection.

You can download the full study or a condensed version, in Adobe .pdf format.  Related posts are in the religion index.

Misconduct in the Federal Prosecution of Sen. Ted Stevens

The Schuelke Report to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan is available for scribd.  It's also available via the New York Times.

"Report Details Inner Workings of Troubled Ethics Trial of Senator," is the New York Times article by Charlie Savage and Michael S. Schmidt.

At least two federal prosecutors involved in the botched ethics trial of the late Senator Ted Stevens “intentionally withheld and concealed” significant evidence from the defense team that could have resulted in his acquittal, a court-appointed investigator has concluded.

In a blistering 514-page report made public on Thursday, the special investigator said he had uncovered evidence that would “prove beyond a reasonable doubt” that two members of the prosecutorial team in the 2008 trial, Joseph W. Bottini and James A. Goeke, had deliberately kept exculpatory information from Mr. Stevens’s defense team.

But the report said that because the federal judge overseeing the trial, Emmet G. Sullivan, had not specifically ordered the government lawyers to turn over any such materials to the defense, as they are required to do by law, they could not be prosecuted for criminal contempt of court.

“Were there a clear, specific and unequivocal order of the court which commanded the disclosure of this information, we are satisfied that a criminal contempt prosecution” would be appropriate, the investigator, Henry F. Schuelke, and a colleague who assisted him, William Shields, concluded.

The AP filing is, "Probe: Document review inadequate in Stevens case."  It's written by Pete Yost.

A report on misconduct in the Justice Department released Thursday paints a picture of a rudderless and sometimes dysfunctional public corruption unit under the man who has since become the face of President Barack Obama's effort to crack down on officials who leak government secrets.

The 525-page report offers a rare and unflattering glimpse behind the scenes of the 2008 prosecution of then-Sen. Ted Stevens, a criminal case that imploded. The prosecution was supervised by William Welch and, although a special prosecutor credited him with trying to correct many problems, the new report portrays Welch as out of the loop and preoccupied, even as others alerted him and other senior managers to signs of trouble.

The document reopens an embarrassing chapter for the Justice Department, which withheld evidence from Stevens' attorneys so often that Attorney General Eric Holder, in his first months on the job, asked that the senator's conviction be overturned. Stevens, 86, died in a plane crash in Alaska in August 2010.

Special prosecutors heaped much of the blame on lower-level prosecutors. But the report also offers an unusually candid look at Welch, who went on to lead two major investigations that accused officials of the Espionage Act for talking to journalists. Those cases also have been marred by missteps that earned rebuke from judges.

Reuters posts, "U.S. prosecutors repeatedly hid evidence in Sen. Stevens case," by Jeremy Pelofsky and James Vicini.

The report also zeroed in on the failure by prosecutors to reveal conflicting recollections by Allen about notes Stevens wrote saying he wanted to pay for improvements to his house that were at the center of the charges against him, and false statements made by Allen during the trial.

Stevens' main defense attorney, Brendan Sullivan, "was not aware when he gave his opening statement, and never learned during or after the trial, that the prosecutors possessed evidence that directly corroborated Senator Stevens' defense," the report said.

Stevens, who died in a plane crash in 2010 and had been the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history, had been charged in 2008 with seven counts of lying on a Senate disclosure form to conceal $250,000 in gifts - primarily the improvements to his Alaska home - from an Alaska oil executive and other friends.

He was convicted days before the 2008 election and lost his bid for re-election, helping Democrats expand their hold in the Senate.

The judge in the case in 2009 overturned the conviction because of evidence that surfaced showing prosecutors failed to turn over evidence, as required under law, that could have helped Stevens' lawyers defend him.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, weeks after taking office in 2009, had the case dismissed.

The judge, Emmet Sullivan, then ordered an independent attorney, Henry Schuelke, to conduct an investigation and that 525-page exhaustive report was released on Thursday.

"Evidence concealed in Stevens corruption case, report says," by Brad Heath and Kevin Johnson for USA Today.

In addition, the investigation found that at least one prosecutor allowed Allen to lie in court. Allen's company paid for renovations to Stevens' home, and Stevens twice sent him letters asking to be billed for the work. Allen told jurors during Stevens' trial that the senator was "just covering his ass."

Allen testified that he had told investigators long before that Stevens didn't want to be billed, when in fact he revealed that information for the first time less than a week before the trial began. The report suggests that Stevens' attorneys could have used the fact to argue that his statement was false.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Bottini "knew the testimony was false and knew that he had an obligation … to correct that testimony there and then, but he did not," the report found. It said Bottini "endorsed and capitalized on Mr. Allen's false denial during his summation."

"The complete, simultaneous and long term memory failure by the entire prosecution team, four prosecutors and the FBI case agent, of the same statement about an important document made at the same meeting by their key witness in a high profile case is extraordinary," Schuelke's report said.

Additional coverage includes:

"Ted Stevens Report: The Concealed Evidence and the Prosecutors," by Mike Scarcella for Legal Times/Law.com.

"Report: Justice Dept. attorneys withheld information in Stevens case," by Sean Cockerham and Richard Mauer of McClatchy News, via the via Bellingham Herald.

"Prosecutors Withheld Stevens Evidence, Report Says," by Evan Perez at the Wall Street Journal.

"‘Systematic concealment’ of key evidence in Ted Stevens investigation: Report," by Del Quentin Wilber for the Washington Post.

Related posts are in the prosecutorial misconduct index.

Kansas City Star on the ABA Missouri Assessment

"State’s death-penalty system needs a thorough review," is the title of the Kansas City Star editorial.  Here's the beginning:

Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, Missouri has executed more people than all but four other states.

But despite abundant evidence of problems in its judicial process, the state has never seriously considered a review of its death-penalty apparatus or even discussed a framework for one. Now the American Bar Association has provided valuable guidance.

The ABA commissioned a panel of lawyers, judges and scholars to assess whether Missouri measures up to well-established protocols for ensuring a fair process and minimizing the risk of executing an innocent person. The panel’s exhaustive study turned up serious problems with the way people are charged and tried in capital cases.

In many ways, Missouri is behind the times. It doesn’t mandate the best practices for eyewitness identification and interrogation procedures. Its ban on executing mentally retarded people doesn’t account for traumatic brain injuries, dementia or severe mental illness. And its parameters for what constitutes a capital case are too broad.

The best step Missouri could take would be to abolish its death penalty. Unfortunately, state politics today make that an unlikely development. But the state should take pains to make its system fairer and safer.

Earlier coverage of the Missouri Assessment report begins at the link.  The ABA Missouri Assessment is available at the ABA Moratorium Implementation Project website.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/03/13/3489049/the-stars-editorial-missouri-ignores.html#storylink=cpy

Reactions to ABA Assessments in Missouri & Kentucky

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial is, "Report cites numerous failings in applying death penalty," regarding the recently issued ABA Missouri Assessment.

When Gov. Jay Nixon spared the life of killer Richard Clay last January, he, perhaps unwittingly, highlighted a key shortcoming in how the death penalty is applied in Missouri.

Mr. Nixon decided that Mr. Clay shouldn't die for the 1994 murder-for-hire of Randy Martindale in Missouri's Bootheel, but he didn't say why.

At the time of Mr. Nixon's decision, a panel of distinguished Missouri legal scholars already was one year into an exhaustive study into whether the state's application of death penalty statutes complies with the American Bar Association's protocols to ensure fairness and accuracy.

That report, which was released last week, found numerous, serious problems with how the death penalty is applied in Missouri. Among the findings is that the last step in the process, whether or not the governor offers some form of clemency, is not transparent.

And:

Every man or woman on death row deserves a public airing of his or her case. Every decision regarding the state's immense power to decide life or death deserves a transparent process so that, at the very least, there can be public confidence that the ultimate punishment is applied fairly and accurately to the most heinous killers.

That is not the case in Missouri today.

In December the ABA issued its Kentucky Assessment Report.  Today's Lexington Herald-Leader publishes the OpEd, "Prosecutors: Ky. capital punishment unfair." 

Of the 78 people sentenced to death in Kentucky since 1976, 50 have had a death sentence overturned on appeal by Kentucky or federal courts because of significant legal errors. That is an unacceptable error rate of more than 60 percent.

Kentucky's justice system is at an historic moment. As a matter of basic fairness, we must pause to understand and reform the way capital punishment is administered in our state.

Each of us is a current or former prosecutor, some of whom have prosecuted capital cases in our commonwealth.

As prosecutors, we continue to believe that heinous criminal conduct must be punished severely in a way that advances public safety.

However, punishment must be a result of a fair process that produces valid results in which we have full confidence. It is time to suspend executions in Kentucky until the reforms recommended by a groundbreaking professional study are implemented.

Over the last two years, the American Bar Association Kentucky Assessment Team on the Death Penalty, consisting of two retired Kentucky Supreme Court Justices, a former chair of the House Judiciary Committee, distinguished law professors and bar leaders, conducted the most extensive evidence-based analysis of the manner in which the death penalty is administered in Kentucky in the history of the commonwealth.

It's signed by John L. "Jack" Smith, former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky; Alexander T. "Sandy" Taft, former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky; Stephen B. Pence, former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky and former Lt. Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky; Marc S. Murphy, former Jefferson County Commonwealth's Attorney; Michael J. "Mike" O'Connell, Jefferson County Attorney; Joe Gutmann, former Jefferson County Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney; Scott C. Cox, former Assistant U.S. Attorney; Larry D. Simon, former Jefferson County Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney; Will Collins, former Letcher County Commonwealth's Attorney; Jeffrey A. Darling, former Fayette County Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney; J. Stewart Schneider, former Boyd County Commonwealth's Attorney.

The Kentucky Assessment on the Death Penalty is available in Adobe .pdf format at the ABA Moratorium Implementation Project's website.

Earlier coverage of the Kentucky and Missouri reports begins at the links.

Additional Coverage of ABA Missouri Report

The ABA Missouri Assessment Report is available at the link.

Today's Kansas City Star reports, "Missouri death-penalty cases should be reduced, study says."  It's by Jason Hancock.

Missouri should narrow the kinds of cases subject to the death penalty so that only the most serious murders are eligible, according a two-year study sponsored by the American Bar Association.

The state also should prohibit the execution of the severely mentally ill and do a better job of preserving forensic evidence such as DNA samples. it said.

The study, which does not take a position on whether the death penalty should be legal, was released Thursday and conducted by a panel of law professors, private attorneys and federal judges who had been nominated to the bench by Republican and Democratic presidents.

They said serious problems with the death penalty in Missouri must be addressed to ensure fairness in the system and prevent an innocent person from losing his or her life.

“It is the ultimate penalty, and we’ve got to get it right every time,” said Douglas Copeland, a St. Louis attorney who served on the panel.

Among the panel’s other suggestions: improving standards for defense counsel in death penalty cases; revising jury instructions to help jurors better understand their roles in death penalty cases, and narrowing the number of cases subject to the death penalty.

“We discovered important procedural and resource changes that could dramatically reduce errors and inconsistencies in Missouri’s death penalty system,” said Paul Litton, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

"Study recommends changes to Missouri death penalty system," by Elizabeth Crisp for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Missouri prosecutors too often are given the opportunity to seek the death penalty in murder cases, according to a new report.

Aside from limiting the types of cases in which the death penalty can be sought, the American Bar Association-sponsored report makes more than 25 recommendations that it says would improve fairness in the use of capital punishment here. The recommendations range from new evidence preservation policies to laws that aim to protect the mentally disabled.

Currently, prosecutors can use one of 17 aggravating circumstances to argue for death sentences in murder cases.

“Under the current law, virtually any murder is eligible for the death penalty,” said St. Louis attorney Douglas Copeland, who co-chaired the assessment committee that drafted the recommendations.

And:

Missouri is the 10th state for which the ABA has sponsored a death penalty report.

Copeland said the committee members’ views on the death penalty were split. The ABA has sought a moratorium on use of the death penalty in the United States, but the Missouri group did not consider whether the state should end the use of capital punishment, he said.

Instead, the goal, Copeland said, was to “minimize the risk of executing the innocent” and make sure that capital punishment is used only in the most egregious cases.

“Everyone must recognize that it is the ultimate penalty and one that cannot be undone,” he said. “We must get it right every time.”

"Bar Association: Missouri death penalty needs reform," by Jessica Machetta at MissouriNet.  There is video at the link.

A Missouri law panel says crimes punishable by the death penalty are too broad in our state. The American Bar Association report calls for consistency and clarification in state law.

Missouri is the tenth state for which the American Bar Association has released an in-depth analysis — 400 pages worth — of the death penalty. St. Louis Attorney Douglas Copeland was on the panel that has examined the system for two years.

He makes one thing clear — it was not the panel’s function to decide whether there should be a death penalty, or that a moratorium should be implemented.

The Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys responded to that by issuing a statement that says, “Missouri’s prosecutors are pleased the ABA did not recommend a moratorium on the death penalty, as they have in many other states. They obviously realize that, while there is always room for improvement, Missouri’s criminal justice system is fundamentally sound.”

The group did identfiy several factors it says leads to possible inconsistencies in sentencing, including mental illness, preservation of DNA evidence and trial court instruction for jurors. Now, prosecutors can argue to a jury that someone should be sentenced to death, the report says. It lists 17 aggravating circumstances that give prosecutors a wide birth for recommending the death penalty.

"Commission finds death penalty unevenly applied in Missouri," by Dick Aldrich at Missouri News; also with video..

The goal of the assessment team was not to support or rally against the state’s current capital punishment law. Rather, panel member Douglas Copeland said the panel’s assignment was to conduct a review of the laws, procedures, and practices by which the death penalty is implemented in Missouri.

“We kind of left our opinions on the death penalty at the door,” said panel spokesman Douglas Copeland, a private practice attorney from St. Louis.

Overall, the committee found that inconsistencies in Missouri’s laws lead to broad interpretations that in turn lead to inconsistent sentencing. University of Missouri Law School professor Paul Litton said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty should be reserved only for the most extreme cases of murder. Litton said the assessment team found 17 aggravating circumstances in Missouri law that trigger the death sentence, with many creating broad categories under which a criminal can receive a death sentence.

“As a result, the aggravating circumstances provide little guidance to prosecutors with respect to sentencing decisions,” said Litton.

Professor Rodney Uphoff of the University of Missouri School of Law said Missouri courts hand out the death sentence in a seemingly arbitrary manner.

“And the problem with that is, in a run of the mill armed robbery that sadly ends in a murder, that young man gets the death sentence, when across the state, somebody who commits a double homicide only gets life, or life without the possibility for parole,” Uphoff said. “We’re not criticizing prosecutors, what we’re saying is when you look at crimes across the state, you shouldn’t have a vastly different sentence for somebody who commits a crime on end of the state and not on the other end of the state.”

The report concludes that the state legislature is going to have to work out a solution to the statutory problems to bring more consistency to the death penalty process in Missouri.

Earlier coverage of the ABA Missouri Assessment Report is at the link.

ABA Assessment in Missouri

"Study says Missouri death penalty too broad," is the AP post by David A. Lieb, via the Kansas City Star.  It's also available via the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Missouri has too many reasons for which prosecutors can pursue the death penalty against murder suspects and needs to do a better job of preserving forensic evidence such as DNA samples, according to a report being released Thursday.

 The report is the result of a two-year study sponsored by the American Bar Association that was conducted by a panel of law professors, private-sector attorneys and federal judges who had been nominated to the bench by Republican and Democratic presidents. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the report before it was to be publicly released later Thursday at a Capitol news conference.

 The study notes that Missouri has 17 "aggravating circumstances" that give prosecutors wide discretion by which they can argue to jurors that someone should be sentenced to death. One justification, for example, is that the murder was "wantonly vile." The result is that the circumstances "are so broadly drafted as to qualify virtually any intentional homicide as a death penalty case," the report says.

 The report recommends narrowing the law so that only the most serious murder cases are eligible for the death penalty.

Also from Missouri, KMOX-AM reports, "Death Penalty Under Review."

The death penalty in Missouri is again under scrutiny, and this time the concern is the cost.   A senate committee heard testimony from a number of people including the Deputy Director of the Missouri Public Defender System, Dan Gralike.

“I am personally familiar with one death prosecution. It had to be retried because because of various errors five times since 1992. I estimate the cost to the state to be well over three or four  million dollars simply for the cost of the public defender.” said Gralike.

A bill under consideration would have the state auditor study the cost of Missouri’s death penalty.   Republican Representative Stanley Cox testified some crimes deserve the death penalty and the option should not be eliminated.

The ABA Missouri Assessment is available at the ABA Moratorium Implementation Project website.

Late last year, a Kentucky Assessment was released.  Related posts, including other state assessments, are in the ABA index.

The Lerner Report on Philadelphia Capital Indigent Defense

Today's Philadelphia Inquirer reports, "Report calls pay for lawyers in Philly death-penalty cases 'grossly inadequate'."  It's by Robert Moran.  Here's an extended excerpt:

A report ordered by the state Supreme Court concludes that the pay for court-appointed lawyers in Philadelphia death-penalty cases is "grossly inadequate" and "unacceptably increases the risk of ineffective assistance of counsel."

The report, made public Tuesday, was written by Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner, whom the high court ordered to assess the facts and legal issues on the subject and report back. It is now up to the Supreme Court to decide if it will act, and when.

Last year, The Inquirer reported that scores of Philadelphia death-penalty cases had been reversed by appellate courts or sent back for new hearings because of serious errors by defense attorneys. Low pay is a key reason, critics say.

In Philadelphia, fewer than 30 of 11,000 lawyers are willing to take capital-case appointments for indigent clients and also meet minimum state requirements for doing so.

And Philadelphia pays less than any other county in Pennsylvania, according to defense lawyers who petitioned the Supreme Court to increase the fees or halt death-penalty cases until that happens. The high court instead ruled that more information was needed and gave Lerner the assignment.

Lerner, who oversees homicide cases in Philadelphia, was told to determine if the pay for court-appointed lawyers was "so inadequate that it can be presumed that court-appointed counsel are constitutionally ineffective."

He also was asked if the problem needed to be dealt with "in a general, global sense," or case-by-case.

Lerner concluded that each case must be dealt with individually.

"However," he wrote, "the compensation of court-appointed capital defense lawyers in Philadelphia is grossly inadequate, both as to the dollar amount of the compensation and as to the compensation schedule provided by the present fee system.

". . . The existing compensation system unacceptably increases the risk of ineffective assistance of counsel in individual cases and is primarily responsible for the First Judicial District's growing inability to attract a sufficient number of qualified attorneys willing to accept court appointments in capital cases."

"Free lawyers defended," is the brief item in the Phialdelphia Daily News.

A study commissioned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has found that although the fees that the state pays court-appointed attorneys in death-penalty cases are "grossly inadequate," those fees do not mean that all such attorneys are "constitutionally ineffective."

The report, filed yesterday and written by Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner, states that the fee system - "a disaster waiting to happen" - could increase the risk of ineffective legal counsel and is primarily responsible for the low number of attorneys willing to accept court appointments in capital cases.

Among the report's recommendations are that a new fee system be created that pays capital-case attorneys a rate of $90 per hour for preparation and court time. Currently, lead attorneys are paid a $2,000 flat preparation fee plus $400 for each full trial day.

Judge Lerner's Report is available in Adobe .pdf format.  Thanks to Jeff Gamso for securing the Lerner Report and Recommendations.

Earlier coverage of the Philadelphia capital indigent defense system begins at the link.  Related posts are in the indigent defense index.

Texas Criminal Justice Roundup

Yesterday's Austin American-Statesman carried two news reports of note.  "Judge: Mentally incompetent state inmates being kept in jail too long," is by Andrea Ball.  Here's an extended excerpt:

Texas routinely violates the constitutional rights of mentally incompetent prisoners by forcing them to stay in jail for up to six months before moving them to psychiatric hospitals, a Travis County judge ruled this week.

State District Judge Orlinda Naranjo ruled that the Department of State Health Services must start moving "forensic commitments" — people accused of crimes who have been ruled incompetent to stand trial because of mental illness — to state psychiatric hospitals within 21 days of receiving a judge's order. Over the past two years , the average prisoner spent six months in jail waiting for a hospital bed, the ruling states.

"Keeping incompetent pretrial criminal defendants confined in county jail for unreasonable periods of time violates the incompetent detainees' due process rights as guaranteed by the Texas Constitution," Naranjo wrote.

A final order that would specifically lay out how the health department should proceed has not been issued, said Tom Kelley, spokesman for the attorney general's office. That agency has not decided whether it will appeal the case. Right now, there is no timetable for when the changes might be instituted.

"Getting people into treatment as quickly as possible is extremely important to us," said Carrie Williams, a spokeswoman for the Department of State Health Services. "The sooner the better. We're always working toward that, and we will explore how we would logistically comply with a final order."

The ruling, issued Monday, stems from a 2007 lawsuit filed by Disability Rights Texas, a federally funded organization that advocates for people with disabilities, including mental illness. In that lawsuit, the group claimed that the health department regularly refuses to take forensic commitments because the hospitals do not have space for them. Once at such facilities, inmates receive psychiatric drugs and other treatments to restore their mental ability to face their criminal charges.

But the delay in getting inmates into hospitals clogs local jails, slows the legal system and violates inmates' rights to due process, said Beth Mitchell, a lawyer with Disability Rights Texas. On Wednesday, the Travis County Sheriff's Office had 18 inmates waiting for a bed at a psychiatric facility.

Related posts are in the mental illness index.

Mike Ward writes, "New study: Texas spends 23 percent more on prisons."

Texas taxpayers pay an average 23 percent more for state prisons than the state’s annual corrections budget reflects, a first-of-a-kind national study shows.

The new report by the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York-based research organization that tracks criminal justice trends, calculates the state’s total costs for its adult corrections and prison programs at $3.3 billion — almost $783 million higher than the $2.5 billion annual budget for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Usually, corrections spending is tracked by comparing the budgets for prison and parole agencies. The Vera Institute study includes additional costs such as contributions to pension and benefit programs and capital costs.

Nationally, corrections spending is the second fastest-growing budget item for states, behind Medicaid. In Texas, the prison system’s budget was trimmed by about 10 percent last year thanks to cuts that were mandated because of a projected revenue shortfall.

The study found that among the 40 states that responded to a survey, the total fiscal year 2010 taxpayer cost of prisons was $38.8 billion, $5.4 billion more than in state corrections budgets for that year.

That is important because as state budgets tighten up, lawmakers in Texas and elsewhere have begun looking at better ways to ensure public safety and provide less-expensive ways of rehabilitating and correcting low-level, non-violent offenders offenders.

With another tight state budget expected in 2013, the costs of state corrections programs — especially the mushrooming cost of providing health care to an aging population of convicts — are expected to be a key topic for debate when the Legislature reconvenes in a year. The cost of prison health care is among the fastest-growing items in the state budget, after Medicaid.

The report, The Price of Prisons: What Incarceration Costs Taxpayers by the Vera Institute of Justice is available in Adobe .pdf format

Commentary on the Kentucky ABA Assessment

"Place moratorium on Ky. executions," is the title of a Lexington Herald-Leader editorial.  It appeared in the Saturday edition.

The American Bar Association's study of capital punishment in Kentucky is full of disturbing facts, such as:

-  At least 10 of the 78 people sentenced to death since 1976 were represented by lawyers who were later disbarred.

-  Kentucky has inadequate protections against convicting the innocent and permits destruction of evidence while a person is imprisoned, which would make a DNA exoneration impossible.

-  Among jurors, there is a widespread lack of understanding of how they were supposed to weigh the evidence in death penalty cases.

Even supporters of capital punishment, which includes this editorial page, will come away from this study with serious doubts about the fairness and accuracy of the process that condemned 34 people to Kentucky's Death Row.

The study took two years and was overseen by a panel of Kentucky lawyers and law professors, including former Supreme Court justices James Keller and Martin Johnstone.

The ABA, which has no position on the death penalty, has undertaken similar assessments in eight other states, and in five of them recommended a moratorium on executions while flaws in the system were addressed.

The Louisville Courier-Journal carried the OpEd, "Suspend Kentucky executions until system is reformed: Ensuring justice must be our primary concern," written by by William T. (Bill) Robinson III, James E. Keller, and Martin E. Johnstone; all participants in the assessment.

Consider the case of a person convicted and sentenced to die with only the evidence of inadmissible hearsay linking him to the crime. Or the person whose defense counsel consisted of a “semi-retired” volunteer lawyer with a drinking problem and a second lawyer with no experience in trying felony cases. Another egregious case involves a defendant whose lawyers failed to present any evidence that would convince the jury to spare his life, when available evidence would have supported a lesser sentence.

We’re saddened to report that these are not only real death penalty cases in Kentucky, but they’re also all too common. The list of problematic cases is staggering, and review of the system is deeply troubling. Fairness, impartiality and effectiveness of counsel have been undermined by serious flaws that reveal systemic problems in administration of the death penalty in the commonwealth.

Since Kentucky reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 50 of the 78 people sentenced to death have had a death sentence or conviction overturned on appeal due to serious errors or misconduct that occurred at trial.

Most people facing the death penalty are not sympathetic figures. Their alleged crimes are abhorrent and families of the victims experience unfathomable grief. But delivering justice is the foundation of our system — a principle that we must uphold for everyone — even those whose actions are repugnant and even when outraged communities desire to see the ultimate punishment.

And:

We are hopeful that our detailed report and analysis will be a call to action for reform of the death penalty system.In Kentucky, we must reserve capital punishment for the most heinous of offenses and offenders; we have to make sure that we are getting it right. We owe the citizens of this commonwealth no less.

The Kentucky Assessment on the Death Penalty is available in Adobe .pdf format at the ABA Moratorium Implementation Project's website.

Earlier coverage of the ABA's Kentucky report begins at the link.

Bureau of Justice Statistics 2010 Data & Reports Available

"Capital Punishment, 2010 - Statistical Tables" is one of the data sets available.

Presents characteristics of persons under sentence of death on December 31, 2010, and persons executed in 2010. Preliminary data on executions by states during 2011 are included. Tables present state-by-state information on the movement of prisoners into and out of death sentence status during 2010, status of capital statutes, and methods of execution. Tables also summarize data on offender characteristics, such as sex, race, Hispanic origin, and time between death sentence and execution. Data are from the National Prisoner Statistics (NPS-8) series.

Highlights include the following:

• At yearend 2010, 36 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons held 3,158 inmates under sentence of death, 15 fewer inmates than at yearend 2009.
• Between January 1 and December 19, 2011, 13 states executed 43 inmates, which was 3 fewer than the number executed as of the same date in 2010.
• During 2010, 119 inmates were removed from under sentence: 46 were executed, 20 died by means other than execution, and 53 were removed as a result of sentences or convictions overturned or commutations of sentences.

"Correctional Population in the United States, 2010," is also available.  2010 marks the first time since 1972 that the U.S. prison population has decreased.

Presents statistics on the number of offenders under the supervision of adult correctional authorities in the United States at yearend 2010. Persons supervised by adult correctional authorities include those in the community under the authority of probation or parole agencies that supervise adults and those incarcerated in state or federal prisons or local jails. The report provides the change in the total correctional population, by correctional status, during 2010. It also examines the impact of the changes in the community supervision and incarcerated populations during the year on the change observed in the total correctional population.

A news release announcing the data is, "U.S. Correctional Population Declined For Second Consecutive Year.  Prison population declined for first time in nearly four decades."  Here's an excerpt:

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reported today that the number of offenders under adult correctional supervision in the U.S. declined 1.3 percent in 2010, the second consecutive year of decline since BJS began reporting on this population in 1980. At yearend 2010, about 7.1 million people, or 1 in 33 adults, were under the supervision of adult correctional authorities in the U.S.

In addition, the total U.S. prison population fell to 1.6 million at yearend 2010, a decline of 0.6 percent during the year, the first decline in the total prison population in nearly four decades. This decline was due to a decrease of 10,881 in the number of state prisoners, which fell to just under 1.4 million persons and was the largest yearly decrease since 1977. The federal prison population grew by 0.8 percent (1,653 prisoners) to reach 209,771, the smallest percentage increase since 1980.

Most offenders under correctional supervision (about 7 in 10 persons or nearly 4.9 million people) were supervised in the community on probation or parole at yearend 2010. About 3 in 10 (or nearly 2.3 million people) were incarcerated in state or federal prisons or local jails.The decline in the total correctional population during 2010 was mainly due to a decrease in the number of probationers during the year (down 69,500 persons) and a decrease in the number of inmates incarcerated in local jails (down 18,700 persons).  

During 2010, prison releases (708,677) exceeded prison admissions (703,798). The decrease in commitments into state prison, especially the 3.3 percent decrease in the number committed from the courts on a new sentence, was responsible for the decline in the state prison population. The time that offenders entering state prison could expect to serve on a commitment, about 2 years, remained relatively stable between 2009 and 2010, which indicates that the decline in the state prison population during the year was the result of a decrease in admissions.

Half of state departments of corrections reported decreases in their prison population during 2010. California (down 6,213) and Georgia (down 4,207) reported the largest decreases, followed by New York (down 2,031) and Michigan (down 1,365). Illinois (up 3,257) reported the largest increase, followed by Texas (up 2,400) and Arkansas (up 996).

In 2010, the U.S. imprisonment rate dropped to 497 inmates per 100,000 residents, continuing a decline since 2007, when the imprisonment rates peaked at 506 inmates per 100,000 residents. The national imprisonment rate for males (938 per 100,000 male U.S. residents) was about 14 times the imprisonment rate for females (67 per 100,000 female U.S. residents).

Among offender age groups, about 3.1 percent of black males in the nation were in state or federal prison, compared to just under 0.5 percent of white males and 1.3 percent of Hispanic males. Also, an estimated 7.3 percent of all black males ages 30 to 34 were incarcerated with a sentence of more than 1 year.

AlterNet reports, "Are We Moving Towards Reform? For the First Time in 40 Years, U.S. Prison Population Declines."  It's written by Phillip Smith.

In two reports releases last week, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced that for the first time since 1972, the US prison population had fallen from the previous year and that for the second year in a row, the number of people under the supervision of adult correctional authorities had also declined.

And:

Drug offenders accounted for 18% of state prison populations in 2009, the last year for which that data is available. Violent offenders made up 53% of the state prison population, property offenders accounted for 19%, and public order or other offenders accounted for 9%.

In the federal prison population, drug offenders made up a whopping 51% of all prisoners, with public order offenders (mainly weapons and immigration violations) accounting for an additional 35%. Only about 10% of federal prisoners were doing time for violent offenses.

Texas Juries Choosing Life Without Parole

That's the title of an editorial in today's Austin American-Statesman.

Whatever the reason for the decline in the number of executions in Texas, it is welcome news.

According to statistics released last week, death sentences in Texas are at an all-time low. As the American-Statesman's Mike Ward reported last week, Texas juries are increasingly choosing life without parole, an option that has been available to them since 2005.

Ward reported that Texas Department of Criminal Justice figures show that 13 convicts were executed in 2011. That compares with 17 in 2010 and 26 in 2007. In 2000, a record 40 convicts were executed.

There is disagreement between death penalty opponents and supporters as to the reasons for the decline. Opponents say Texas is joining the national drift away from the death penalty.

There were 43 executions nationwide, a 50 percent decline from a decade ago when 85 executions were reported.

"Texas — along with the rest of the nation — is steadily moving away from the death penalty," commented Kristin Houlé, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, which issued a report on the death penalty statistics.

Death penalty supporters cite an aging population and a tough economy for the decline.

And:

Whether Texas juries are opting for life without parole because of growing distaste for the death penalty or for demographic and/or economic reasons is literally academic. The fact is, that Texas juries are using it just as polls indicated they would when the Legislature was again debating the bill, authored by state Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, in 2005. It took him three sessions to get it passed.

Texas prosecutors fought the bill, but State Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, changed his vote and cleared the way for a full vote by the Senate in 2005. The Senate passed the bill on a 25-6. The bill cleared the House on a 104-37 vote.

Though popular on both floors, the bill almost died in both Senate and House committees. Ogden's vote to move the bill to the full Senate was an act of courage. As it turns out, his vote opened an option for Texas juries that had long been denied — and they are using it.

Texas News Service reports, "Fallible Justice System Erodes Support for TX Death Penalty."  It's written by Peter Malof.

Monday's official exoneration of Michael Morton - after serving 25 years in a Texas prison for a murder he did not commit - is just the latest example of a fallible criminal justice system, and one more reason the public is growing increasingly wary of capital punishment, according to Kathryn Kase, a death-penalty lawyer who directs the Texas Defender Service's Trial Project.

Kase thinks public sentiment is approaching a tipping point, reflected, in part, by a sharp decline in Texas executions in 2011.

"Texas hit a 30-year low in new death sentences; we had only eight. We hit a 15-year low in executions; we had only 13. And Texans are having a growing problem with the death penalty."

Recent polls indicate support for capital punishment has dropped nearly 20 points nationwide in the last couple of decades, with a slim majority now preferring to see life sentences without parole. Since Texas began allowing juries to use that option in 2005, Kase says courts have increasingly embraced it as a less-expensive alternative.

The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty issued "Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2011: The Year in Review," last week.  It's available in Adobe .pdf format; news coverage of the report is also available.  More from Kathryn Kase at Texas Defender Service is at the link.

What's Next for Michael Morton

Attorneys for Michael Morton filed a "Report to Court" with exhibits; both available in Adobe .pdf format.  Morton is asking for a court of inquiry to examine possible prosecutorial misconduct in his case.  The State Bar of Texas is already looking into the mattter.

"Charges against Morton formally dismissed; inquiry sought on prosecutor's actions," is the title of Chuck Lindell's latest report in today's Austin American-Statesman.

Michael Morton completed one leg of his legal journey Monday when a judge formally dismissed his murder charge, declaring him innocent of the crime that cost him almost 25 years in prison.

But District Judge Sid Harle delayed a decision on Morton's second request: that a special court examine allegations that his prosecutor, Ken Anderson, broke several laws by concealing evidence before, during and after Morton's trial.

Harle said he needed more time to review the request to convene a court of inquiry, an ad hoc, fact-finding process often used when the actions of a public official have been called into question.

A decision is not expected before year's end because Harle also offered Anderson, now a Georgetown district judge who has repeatedly denied allegations of misconduct in Morton's 1987 trial, a chance to file briefs opposing the inquiry.

The state's highest criminal court has already voided Morton's conviction in the murder of his wife, Christine Morton, who was beaten to death while lying in bed in their southwestern Williamson County home.

But Harle's signature Monday on the motion to dismiss charges formally released Morton from the murder case and brought the hearing to a close with a standing ovation from a packed courtroom.

"What befell you and your family many years ago was a horrendous tragedy," Harle said, commending Morton for never giving up his fight for innocence, even when he was offered a chance at parole if he accepted responsibility for his wife's murder.

And:

To call for another district judge to lead a court of inquiry, Harle would have to agree that there is probable cause that Anderson violated Texas law in his handling of the case. If the court is convened, Anderson would not be a defendant. Instead, the judge would attempt to determine, using affidavits and courtroom testimony, whether laws were broken.

Most of Monday's hearing was devoted to a 140-page report detailing the results of a defense-led investigation begun after Morton's release from prison in early October.

Morton lawyer Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project in New York, told Harle that the investigation's findings strongly suggested that Anderson concealed several pieces of evidence from Morton's trial lawyers in violation of two state laws: tampering with physical evidence, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison that includes concealing "any record or document," and intentionally concealing a government record, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail.

Brandi Grissom posts, "Cleared of Murder, Morton Seeks Accountability," for the Texas Tribune.

A beaming Michael Morton kissed the piece of paper he had been waiting nearly 25 years for on Monday after Judge Sid Harle stepped down from the bench, shook his hand and gave him the order that officially cleared him of his wife’s 1986 murder.

"This is a happy day, obviously," Morton said after the court proceeding, his voice quaking. "But let's not forget this was a horrible crime. My wife's brains were splattered all over the bedroom, the ceiling."

Murder charges against the former grocery store manager were formally dismissed on Monday. Morton spent a quarter century behind bars for a crime that DNA evidence revealed this year he did not commit, and he was released from prison in October.

For Morton, though, the day full of hugs and happiness was not just about freedom. It was also about holding accountable the prosecutor who he alleges withheld evidence that could have led to his acquittal back in 1987. Morton and his lawyers asked Harle, a Bexar County state district judge, to launch an unprecedented court of inquiry to determine whether Ken Anderson broke state laws and violated professional ethics codes by withholding evidence when he prosecuted Morton.

And:

They argue that Anderson concealed police reports that Judge William S. Lott ordered him to disclose during the 1987 trial so that he could determine whether they might help Morton’s case. Lott found nothing exculpatory in the few pages he was provided by Anderson and ordered the record sealed.

When a different judge ordered the record unsealed in August, Morton’s lawyers discovered that Anderson had provided very few of the available police reports. Crucial pieces of evidence were missing, including a transcript of a telephone conversation between a sheriff’s deputy and Morton’s mother-in-law in which she reported that her 3-year-old grandson had seen a “monster” — who was not his father — attack and kill his mother. 

Police reports from Morton’s neighbors were also missing. They told police they saw a man in a green van park near their home and walk into the woods behind their house. Gone from the file, too, were reports that Christine Morton’s credit card had been used and a check with her forged signature cashed after her death.

When Harle freed Morton based on the DNA evidence in October, he also authorized an unusual process that allowed his defense lawyers to investigate Anderson's conduct. The lawyers deposed the lead sheriff’s investigator, an assistant district attorney who worked with Anderson and the former prosecutor himself.

The AP report is, "Wrongfully imprisoned man wants probe," by Juan A. Lozano.  It's via the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

A man wrongfully imprisoned for nearly 25 years for his wife’s murder said Monday that revenge isn’t his motive for seeking an investigation of the prosecutor he and his attorneys believe concealed evidence at his trial.

“A lot of people think I want a pound of flesh,” said Michael Morton, who was freed after new DNA evidence tied another man to the crime. “Revenge is a natural instinct, but it’s not what I’m looking for here, just accountability.”

Morton, 57, spoke Monday after a court hearing in which his attorneys presented findings from a blistering 138-page report in which they accuse the prosecutor in his case of committing “serious acts of misconduct.” The report asks state District Judge Sid Harle to assemble a special court of inquiry to investigate former prosecutor Ken Anderson on charges he disregarded an order at the original trial to turn over all evidence that could have supported Morton’s claims of innocence. The report also accuses Anderson of tampering with evidence and court records.

Fighting back tears, Morton said although his false imprisonment cost him a quarter century of his life and the chance to enjoy his son’s childhood, Monday was a “happy day” because he was able to ask a judge to investigate the allegations against Ken Anderson, who is now a state district judge.

And:

Morton’s attorneys also recommended several policy reforms for lawmakers to consider, including having the Texas Legislature hold hearings on simplifying rules for turning over evidence that could point to a defendant’s innocence.

"‘Extraordinary Legal Event’ Unfolds as Man Exonerated of Wife’s Murder Seeks to Hold DA Accountable,"
by Martha Neil at the ABA Journal.

If given the green light by Judge Sid Harle, a visiting jurist from Bexar County who took over the Morton case in August, the inquiry would apparently be the first of its kind concerning any of the more than 200 inmates nationwide who have been exonerated, like Morton, due to DNA evidence, according to the Times.

“I haven’t seen anything like this, ever,” law professor Bennet L. Gershman of Pace University told the newspaper. “It’s an extraordinary legal event.”

Anderson says he did nothing wrong and has questioned the authority of the court to investigate his work as a prosecutor so long ago.

Yesterday's New York Times carried, "Exonerated of Murder, Texan Seeks Inquiry on Prosecutor," by John Schwartz and Brandi Grissom.

Mr. Morton, who was a manager at an Austin supermarket and had no criminal history, was charged with the beating death of his wife, Christine, in 1986. He had contended that the killer must have entered their home after he left for work early in the morning. But Mr. Anderson convinced the jury that Mr. Morton, in a rage over his wife’s romantic rebuff the previous night — on Mr. Morton’s 32nd birthday — savagely beat her to death.

Mr. Morton was sentenced to life in prison. Beginning in 2005, he pleaded with the court to test DNA on a blue bandanna found near his home shortly after the murder, along with other evidence.

For six years, the Williamson County district attorney, John Bradley, fought the request for DNA testing, based on advice from Judge Anderson, his predecessor and friend. In 2010, however, a Texas court ordered the DNA testing, and the results showed that Mrs. Morton’s blood on the bandanna was mixed with the DNA of another man: Mark A. Norwood, a felon with a long criminal history who lived about 12 miles from the Mortons at the time of the murder. By then, Mr. Morton had spent nearly 25 years in prison.

Mr. Norwood has been arrested and charged in Mrs. Morton’s death and is a suspect in a similar murder from 1988.

And:

In an interview, Mr. Scheck said he hoped the court of inquiry proceeding would result in changes in law and policy that could promote greater fairness in criminal cases. Previous high-profile exonerations, he said, have led to new laws that improved access to DNA testing after conviction and provided generous compensation to those who were wrongfully convicted.

“This is one of those catalytic, iconic cases that leads to reform,” he said.

Earlier coverage of Michael Morton's exoneration begins at the link.

The responsibility of the state to provide exculpatory evidence to the defense was articulated in the 1963 Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland; more via Oyez.  Related posts are in the prosecutorial misconduct index.

Doubts on the Death Penalty

That's the title of a Los Angeles Times editorial reflecting on the DPIC end-of-year report.  It's subtitled, "Even though the majority still support capital punishment, the percentage in favor is declining in the U.S. It's about time."  It appeared in the Saturday paper and leads continued news and commentary on report.

Back in September, much was made of the crowd's reaction at a GOP presidential debate after moderator Brian Williams noted that Texas Gov. Rick Perry had overseen more executions than any governor in modern times, and spectators burst into applause. Liberal pundits saw this as an example of the callousness of GOP voters, but we were more disturbed by the callousness on exhibit from Perry.

And:

We bring this up now, three months after the debate in question, because new data have emerged showing that despite a certain bloodthirsty element in some parts of the conservative base, support is steadily eroding for the ethical, legal and financial morass that is capital punishment. The Death Penalty Information Center's annual report on capital punishment in America, released Thursday, showed that executions continued to drop in 2011, to 43; that's down from 85 in 2000 and 46 last year. More significantly, the number of death sentences across the country fell dramatically this year, to 78 from 112 in 2010. And perhaps most significant of all, the percentage of Americans who say they support the death penalty, which was 80% in 1994, fell to 61%, the lowest ever.

In California, one number in particular stands out: There were only 10 people sentenced to death in the Golden State in 2011, compared with 29 last year. That may be a statistical anomaly, or it may indicate that prosecutors and courts are finally concluding, correctly, that death sentences have become largely pointless; legal complications have prevented anyone from being executed here since 2006. A continuing conflict over the state's method for lethal injection and a shortage of a key drug often used to perform it, mean this situation won't be resolved any time soon.

Yes, a majority of Americans still favor capital punishment. But the approval curve is heading in the right direction — downward — providing reason to hope that as our society evolves, the death penalty will die off.

The Houston Chronicle reports, "Capital punishment 'on the defensive'."  It's written by Mike Tolson.

America's enthusiasm for capital punishment - once a staple of electoral politics and a perennial hot topic in discussions of the criminal justice system - continued its decade-long decline this year, according to the annual report of the Death Penalty Information Center.

The number of new death sentences imposed by juries in 2011 fell below 100 for the first time since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976. Total executions dropped to 43, three-quarters of those in the South.

Just a decade ago, juries around the country returned more than 200 death sentences. But in 2011 the total reached only 80. Although the tabulations were made before year's end, capital murder trials rarely are held in the last two weeks of December.

"The bottom line is the death penalty is on the defensive," said Richard Dieter, director of the DPIC, an information clearing house that opposes capital punishment. "This year was a real strong drop. If it was only this year, that would be a fluke, but coupled with other years and measures, it reflects a real concern about the death penalty."

And:

Most states, including Texas, now allow juries to impose life-without-parole sentences. Experts agree that this sentencing option has had a big impact. For one thing, it potentially makes it easier for a jury to compromise in cases where some may be uncomfortable with imposing death. Of perhaps greater significance is the influence it has on prosecutors, who now have a palatable alternative.

Prosecutors in key jurisdictions such as Harris and Dallas counties who were unabashed fans of the death penalty have retired or are no longer in office. Those in charge now are more selective. Legendary Harris County District Attorney Johnny Holmes used to say he pursued death in any murder case where he believed a jury would return the sentence, which helped establish Houston's nationwide reputation as the "capital of capital punishment." Pat Lykos, the current DA, has said repeatedly that her office will seek death "where appropriate." Since she took office in 2009, the county has sent six defendants to death row.

The Saturday evening edition of NBC Nightly News carried Pete Williams' report, "Death penalty is dying out."

 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

"Decrease in U.S. Executions Points to Eventual Abolishment, Says W&L Law Professor," by Peter Jetton is at the Washington & Lee University website.

The steady downward trend in the use of the death penalty in the United States represents a "fairly irreversible decline" and suggests a time when the death penalty will be abolished, says David Bruck, a Washington and Lee University law professor.

Statistics released this week by the Death Penalty Information Center indicate that the number of executions in the U.S. has decreased by 75 percent since 1996 and is at its lowest level since capital punishment was reinstated in the United States in 1976.

Bruck, clinical professor of law at W&L and director of the Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse, cites several reasons for the decline.

States that still use the death penalty, he says, now provide an option for juries to sentence defendants to life imprisonment without parole. And, he adds, juries that do sentencing in capital cases must be told about that option.

"So juries understand that society is protected either way and the death penalty is generally not necessary as a way of protecting society against dangerous murderers," said Bruck.

Another reason for the decline, in Bruck's view, involves the number of people on death row who have been shown to be convicted in error, sometimes by use of DNA testing.

"Since the 1990s, the American public has received something of a shock about the fallibility of the criminal justice system," he said. "For a long time, it was thought that the only mistakes the system ever made was failing to convict or failing to imprison dangerous people.

Alabama's Birmingham News carries, "Use of death penalty drops, but not in Alabama," by Esther Brown of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Nationwide, death sentences dropped to 78 in 2011. This is the first time since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976 that the courts have imposed fewer than 100 death sentences in a given year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center's Year End Report. Death sentences have declined about 75 percent since 1996, when 315 individuals were sentenced to death. Not in Alabama.

Executions were also down around the country, with 43 in 2011 and 46 in 2010, representing a 56 percent drop since 1999, when there were 98. But not in Alabama.

Even Texas experienced a 46 percent decline in executions over the past two years. The Lone Star State carried out 13 executions in 2011 and 24 in 2009. In the same period, Alabama's execution rate increased.

And:

Alabama should stop and listen. I am very tired of saying "and then there is Alabama."

The DPIC report, "The Death Penalty in 2011: Year End Report," is available in Adobe .pdf format.  News coverage and commentary on the report begins at the link.

News Coverage of the TCADP Report

"Texas executions, death sentences continue to decline," is the title of Mike Ward's report in today's Austin American-Statesman.

Executions in Texas, which has operated the busiest death chamber in the United States for years, have fallen to their lowest level in 15 years, new statistics showed Thursday.

In fact, Texas' new death sentences — which account for 30 percent of executions nationally — remained at an all-time low set last year as more juries imposed life without parole instead.

Victim rights advocates said the decline can be traced to an overall decrease in crime and concerns about the cost of litigating executions, while death penalty opponents attributed it to increasing public discomfort with executions amid concern about wrongful convictions and discrimination against racial minorities.

According to Texas Department of Criminal Justice statistics, 13 convicts were executed in 2011, compared with 17 in 2010 and 26 in 2007. A record 40 convicts were executed in 2000.

"Texas — along with the rest of the nation — is steadily moving away from the death penalty," said Kristin Houlé, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, which issued a report on the death penalty statistics.

Nationwide, 43 people were executed this year, a 50 percent decline from 10 years ago, when 85 were executed.

In the past year, prison statistics show, Texas' death row received only eight new convicts, the same as 2010 and the lowest number since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty in 1976. In 1999, the population of Texas' death row ballooned by 48.

"Use of the death penalty has been relegated to just a few jurisdictions in the state as prosecutors and jurors accept alternatives that protect society and punish those who are truly guilty," Houlé said. "Still, long-standing concerns about the arbitrary and biased administration of the death penalty remain."

And:

In the past three years, crime rates in Texas and across the nation have generally dropped, as has the prison population in many states. Texas' convict count is down slightly, allowing officials four months ago to close the first prison in state history.

Statistics show that since the Legislature enacted a life-without-parole law six years ago, the number of prisoners given that sentence has increased as the number of death sentences has generally declined. Through November, 398 convicts were in prison with no chance of parole — some who might otherwise have received the death penalty.

"Fewer Execution, Death Sentences in Texas," by Ian Crawford at KUT-FM.

The state of Texas executed 13 people in 2011. A report issued by the Austin-based Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty this morning says that’s the fewest since 1996 and well below the record of 40 executions set in 2000.

Kristin Houlé is the coalition’s executive director. She says one reason for the decreased number of executions is that five death row inmates received stays of execution this year.

“These includes two cases where there remains doubt,” Houlé told KUT News. She noted the case of Hank Skinner, who had a November execution date stayed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals while that panel determines whether changes in DNA testing laws would affect his case.

Houlé also says the report shows a 70 percent decrease in the number of death sentences handed out by Texas juries since 2003. Only eight death sentences were issued this year, the same number as last year. She thinks the Skinner case and the case of Cameron Todd Willingham has played a role in the decrease in death penalty sentences.

Coverage of the TCADP end-of-year- report begins at the link.  "Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2011: The Year in Review," is available in Adobe .pdf format.  TCADP has also provided a map of new Texas death sentences issued between 2007-2011.

TCADP Issues Texas 2011 Report

The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has issued its 2011 year-end report, "Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2011: The Year in Review," in Adobe .pdf format.

TCADP has also issued a news release announcing the report, "State of Texas Carries Out Fewest Executions Since 1996, According to New Report from TCADP.  New Death Sentences Remain at Record-Low Level, Imposed by Just Six Counties in the State."  Here's an excerpt from the release:

Executions dropped to the lowest number since 1996 and death sentences in Texas remained at a historic low level in 2011, according to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty’s (TCADP) new report, Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2011: The Year in Review. TCADP is an Austin-based statewide, grassroots advocacy organization.
 
In 2011, the State of Texas carried out 13 executions, which is 50% less than in 2007. It accounted for 30% of the national total, once again a smaller percentage than years past but still twice as many as any other state. Texas has executed a total of 477 people since 1982; 238 executions have occurred during the administration of Texas Governor Rick Perry, more than any other governor in U.S. history.
 
For the second year in a row, juries condemned eight new individuals to death in Texas. This remains the lowest number of new death sentences since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas’ revised death penalty statute in 1976. Once again, just six counties in the state of Texas accounted for the new death row inmates: Fort Bend (1); Galveston (1); Harris (3); Harrison (1); Tarrant (1); and Travis (1). This represents 2% of all Texas counties.
 
“Texas – along with the rest of the nation – is steadily moving away from the death penalty,” said Kristin Houlé, Executive Director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. “Use of the death penalty has been relegated to just a few jurisdictions in the state as prosecutors and jurors accept alternatives that protect society and punish those who are truly guilty. Still, longstanding concerns about the arbitrary and biased administration of the death penalty remain.”
 
An analysis of data from 2007 to 2011 reveals that only 23 Texas counties have imposed death sentences over the last 5 years; of these, only 10 counties have done so in the last 2 years. Out of a total 51 death sentences imposed in this time period, Harris County leads with 9; it is followed by Dallas County, with 7 new sentences since 2007, and Tarrant and Travis Counties, with 4 new sentences each. The other 19 counties imposed 1-3 sentences each. Together, these 23 counties represent just 9% of the 254 counties in Texas.

TCADP has also provided a map of new Texas death sentences issued between 2007-2011.

Related posts are in the report index.