Skip to main content * Fact Sheet * Upcoming Executions * Execution Database * State-by-State * Podcasts Menu * Home * Issues + Arbitrariness + Clemency + Costs + Deterrence + Federal Death Penalty + Foreign Nationals + Innocence + Intellectual Disability + International + Juveniles + Life Without Parole + Mental Illness + Native Americans + Race + Representation + U.S. Military + Victims + Women + More Issues * Resources + Articles + Books + Editorials + Educational Curricula + Executions Database + Law Review + Multimedia + New Voices + Public Opinion + Related Web Sites + Religion + State by State Database + State Information + Student Resources + Studies + Testimony, Resolutions, Statements & Speeches + Weekly Newsletter + Death Penalty Quiz + More Resources * Facts + Crimes Punishable by the Death Penalty + Death Row + Executions + Lethal Injection + en Español + History of the Death Penalty + Murder Rates + Recent Legislative Activity + Sentencing + States With the Death Penalty + U.S. Supreme Court + Upcoming Executions * Reports * About + About DPIC + DPIC Newsletter + Staff & Board of Directors + Support this Work + Connect with DPIC * Press * Donate Enter your keywords ______________________________ Search View the results at Google, or enable JavaScript to view them here. * Fact Sheet * Upcoming Executions * Execution Database * State-by-State What's New Texas Prepares to Execute Richard Masterson While Autopsy Data Suggests Death Was Not Murder At All Posted: January 15, 2016 As Texas readies itself to execute Richard Masterson (pictured), his lawyers have filed new pleadings questioning whether any murder occurred at all and are seeking a stay of execution based on what they say is "evidence of State fraud, misconduct, and his actual innocence." Masterson's filings challenge the forensic testimony presented by the prosecution in the case, the accuracy of instructions given to jurors, and the constitutionality of Texas' lethal injection secrecy law. Masterson is scheduled to be executed on January 20 for the death of Darrin Honeycutt, which medical examiner, Paul Shrode, testified had been caused by strangulation. His attorneys argue in a new state court filing that prosecutors concealed evidence that their expert witness and attending medical examiner was unqualified to perform Mr. Honeycutt’s autopsy, botched the autopsy, falsified his credentials, and gave false testimony in this case and other capital murder trials. Two pathologists who examined autopsy data say that the Shrode was unqualified and incorrectly ruled Honeycutt's death a homicide, when it was most likely caused by a heart attack. In 2010, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland commuted the death sentence of Richard Nields based upon concerns about Dr. Shrode's assertion that the victim in that case had been strangled. Shrode was subsequently fired as chief medical examiner in El Paso County, Texas, after discrepancies were found in his resume and revelations were made about his unsupported testimony in the Ohio case. IFRAME: //www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or g/node/6353&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=95&font=arial&height= 25&action=recommend&colorscheme=light&locale=en_US&send=false in: * Arbitrariness * What's New * Lethal Injection * Innocence * Texas * Read more * 7 reads Study Finds Disparities in Race, Gender, and Geography in Florida Executions Posted: January 14, 2016 Florida executions are plagued by stark racial, gender, and geographic disparities, according to a new University of North Carolina study, with executions 6.5 times more likely for murders of white female victims than for murders of black males. (See graph, left. Click to enlarge.). UNC Chapel Hill Professor Frank Baumgartner examined data from the 89 executions conducted in Florida between 1976 - when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Florida's use of the death penalty - and 2014. Baumgartner found that executions occurred disproportionately in cases involving white victims and victims who were female. While 56% of all Florida homicide victims during that period were white, 72% of all executions involved white victims. Similarly, 26% of all murder victims were female, but 43% of executions involved female victims. 71% of the black defendants executed in Florida had been convicted of murdering white victims. On the other hand, no white person had been executed in Florida for killing a black victim. Baumgartner also found that the state's use of the death penalty was geographically concentrated, with just 6 of Florida's 67 counties accounting for more than half of all executions. More than half of Florida's counties (36) have not produced any executions, and homicide rates were 31% lower in those counties. The study concludes that "factors such as the victims’ race and gender, as well as the county in which the offender was convicted, inappropriately influence who is executed in Florida....These disparities are not measured by a few percentage points of difference. Rather, they differ by orders of magnitude, clearly demonstrating that vast inequities characterize the implementation of capital punishment in Florida." IFRAME: //www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or g/node/6351&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=95&font=arial&height= 25&action=recommend&colorscheme=light&locale=en_US&send=false in: * Arbitrariness * What's New * Florida * Studies * Race * Read more * 770 reads 60 Minutes Profiles Life After Death Row for Exoneree Anthony Ray Hinton Posted: January 13, 2016 On Sunday, January 10, 60 Minutes aired an interview with Anthony Ray Hinton, who was exonerated on April 3, 2015 after spending nearly 30 years on Alabama's death row. In the interview, Hinton described how issues of race permeated his case. Hinton told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley about a conversation he had with a police lieutenant after having been arrested: "I said, 'You got the wrong guy.' And he said, 'I don't care whether you did it or don't.' He said, 'But you gonna be convicted for it. And you know why?' I said, 'No.' He said, 'You got a white man. They gonna say you shot him. Gonna have a white D.A. We gonna have a white judge. You gonna have a white jury more than likely.' And he said, 'All of that spell conviction, conviction, conviction.' I said, 'Well, does it matter that I didn't do it?' He said, 'Not to me.'" Hinton went on to explain how he felt about the racial bias in his case: "I can't get over the fact that just because I was born black and someone that had the authority who happened to be white felt the need to send me to a cage and try to take my life for something that they knew that I didn't do." Bryan Stevenson, Hinton's attorney and the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, joined Hinton for the interview, and spoke about the systemic issues surrounding the case. "This isn't luck, this was a system, this was actually our justice system, it was our tax dollars who paid for the police officers who arrested Mr. Hinton. Our tax dollars that paid for the judge and the prosecutor that prosecuted him. That paid for the experts who got it wrong. That paid to keep him on death row for 30 years for a crime he didn't commit. This has nothing to do with luck. This has everything to do with the way we treat those who are vulnerable in our criminal justice system." IFRAME: //www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or g/node/6350&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=95&font=arial&height= 25&action=recommend&colorscheme=light&locale=en_US&send=false in: * Alabama * What's New * Innocence * Race * Read more * 1,544 reads U.S. Supreme Court Strikes Down Florida's Death Sentencing Scheme Posted: January 12, 2016 In an 8-1 decision in Hurst v. Florida released on January 12, the U.S. Supreme Court found Florida's capital sentencing scheme in violation of the 6th Amendment, which guarantees the right to trial by jury. "The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the opinion of the Court. The jury and judge in Hurst's case followed Florida's statutory sentencing procedure, which requires only an "advisory sentence" from a jury. Florida does not require the jury to specify the factual basis of its sentencing recommendation. The sentencing judge must give "great weight" to the jury's recommendation, but only the judge ever provides written reasons why a case is eligible for a death sentence. The Court based its decision largely on Ring v. Arizona, a 2002 decision in which it struck down Arizona's sentencing scheme because a judge, rather than a jury, determined the facts necessary to impose a death sentence. While Florida's procedure adds the advisory recommendation that Arizona's lacked, the Court found the distinction, "immaterial." "As with Timothy Ring, the maximum punishment Timothy Hurst could have received without any judge-made findings was life in prison without parole. As with Ring, a judge increased Hurst’s authorized punishment based on her own factfinding. In light of Ring, we hold that Hurst’s sentence violates the Sixth Amendment." IFRAME: //www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or g/node/6349&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=95&font=arial&height= 25&action=recommend&colorscheme=light&locale=en_US&send=false in: * Arbitrariness * What's New * Sentencing * Florida * U.S. Supreme Court * Read more * 1,660 reads Connecticut Supreme Court Hears Prosecutors' Argument Seeking to Overturn Death Penalty Ban Posted: January 11, 2016 On January 7, the Connecticut Supreme Court heard arguments in State of Connecticut v. Russell Peeler, in which state prosecutors are seeking to overturn the court's 4-3 decision last summer declaring Connecticut's death penalty unconstitutional. The court ruled in August in State v. Santiago that Connecticut's prospective legislative repeal of the death penalty, in combination with "the state’s near total moratorium on carrying out executions over the past fifty-five years," established that "capital punishment has become incompatible with contemporary standards of decency in Connecticut." If the court holds to that decision, the state's remaining death row prisoners would be resentenced to life without possibility of parole. One of the four justices who voted with the majority, Justice Flemming Norcott Jr., retired recently, changing the makeup of the court. Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers, who voted with the minority in the Santiago decision, worried that the appeal presents the possibility of a "slippery slope," saying, "Why shouldn't the court be concerned that every time there's a hotly contested 4-3 decision … that this isn't just going to become a numbers game, that the parties will then wait until somebody retires or leaves the court and raise the issue again?" Prosecutors argued that the court's decision, "eliminated the democratic process." Senior Assistant Public Defender Mark Rademacher, who argued on behalf of the death row inmates, said, "This is a unique decision and a unique problem far different than interpreting a statute, and the majority found that it was a fairly clear statement that the death penalty no longer comports with the standards of decency of Connecticut citizens as expressed through their elected representatives." IFRAME: //www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or g/node/6348&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=95&font=arial&height= 25&action=recommend&colorscheme=light&locale=en_US&send=false in: * Arbitrariness * What's New * Connecticut * Recent Legislative Activity * Read more * 1,310 reads Harvard Law Professor Chronicles 'The Death Penalty's Last Stand' Posted: January 8, 2016 In a recent article in Slate, Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree, the executive director of the university's Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, says "the death penalty is collapsing under the weight of its own corruption and cruelty." He emphasizes the increasing isolation of capital punishment to a few outlier jurisdictions, particularly highlighting Caddo Parish, Louisiana. Caddo Parish received national attention when, shortly after the exoneration of Glenn Ford, who was wrongfully convicted and spent 30 years on death row, District Attorney Dale Cox said the state should "kill more people." Ogletree described the legacy of racial violence and intimidation in the parish, including that Caddo Parish, which has been responsible for 8 of Louisiana's 12 death sentences since 2010, was "the site of more lynchings of black men than all but one other county In America." Until 2011, a Confederate flag flew atop a monument to the Confederacy outside the entrance to the parish courthouse in Shreveport where jurors reported for duty. In 2015, a study (click image to enlarge) found that Caddo prosecutors struck prospective black jurors at triple the rate of other jurors. Ogletree spotlighted a number of questionable death sentences imposed on Caddo defendants who may have been innocent and framed, were intellectually disabled or mentally ill teenagers, or who suffered from serious brain damage and mental illness, and who were provided systemically deficient representation. "Caddo offers us a microcosm of what remains of the death penalty in America today," Ogletree says. 33 jurisdictions have abolished the death penalty or not carried out an execution in more than 9 years. Just six states performed executions in 2015, and three-quarters of the people who were executed last year raised serious questions about mental health or innocence. Death sentences were at a record low (49), and 14, he said, came from two states - Alabama and Florida - that allow non-unanimous jury recommendations of death. Ogletree concludes, "The death penalty in America today is the death penalty of Caddo Parish—a cruel relic of a bygone and more barbarous era. We don’t need it, and I welcome its demise." IFRAME: //www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or g/node/6347&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=95&font=arial&height= 25&action=recommend&colorscheme=light&locale=en_US&send=false in: * Alabama * Arbitrariness * What's New * Innocence * Florida * Prosecutorial Misconduct * Race * Louisiana * Read more * 2,020 reads More Nations Reject Death Penalty, Even as Use Spikes in Shrinking Minority of Countries Posted: January 7, 2016 The New York Times reports that the number of countries using capital punishment continued to shrink and its use became more isolated from 2013 to 2014, even as the number of death sentences worldwide rose. 105 countries have abolished the death penalty, most recently Suriname and Mongolia, and the United Nations lists 60 additional countries as "de facto abolitionist" because they have not had any executions in at least 10 years. That leaves just 28 countries that still practice capital punishment. However, the Times reports, the number of death sentences imposed around the world increased by 28%. Ivan Simonovic, the United Nations assistant secretary general for human rights, called it "a troubling paradox that while the majority of countries have abandoned the use of the death penalty, the overall number of those sentenced to death has been increasing recently." He said, "Terrorism offenses and drug-related offenses seem to be the driving arguments behind this increase, although there is no evidence of its deterring effects." China carries out more executions than any other country, estimated in the thousands, though the exact number is unknown. Saudi Arabia's January 2 execution of a Shiite cleric sparked conflict between that nation and Iran; both countries have been criticized by human rights groups for using the death penalty for drug offenses and religious charges. The 5 countries that conducted the most executions were China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Iraq. (Click image to enlarge.) IFRAME: //www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or g/node/6344&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=95&font=arial&height= 25&action=recommend&colorscheme=light&locale=en_US&send=false in: * What's New * International * Read more * 853 reads Report Finds 'Failure of Leadership' by Orange County District Attorney's Office in Jailhouse Informant Scandal Posted: January 6, 2016 A new report by a special committee created by Orange County, California District Attorney Tony Rackauckas (pictured) cites a "failure of leadership" as the root cause of a multi-decade history of prosecutorial misconduct involving jailhouse informants. Documents obtained by defense lawyers and The Orange County Register had revealed what the paper called "a secret and well-organized network of snitches" that had been hidden from defense counsel and the courts. In May 2015, California Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals disqualified the entire Orange County District Attorney's office from participating in the capital trial of Scott Dekraai after Dekraai's attorneys alleged that prosecutors had deliberately violated his constitutional rights by arranging to place him in a cell near an informant who had been instructed to elicit incriminating statements. The court found that the county's prosecutors had repeatedly violated court orders to disclose information about informants, hiding the existence of an intricate computerized data base tracking how they were used. The prosecutor's office also faces criticism for allegedly failing to disclose benefits it provided to an informant - who now says she provided false testimony - in the 1997 capital trial of John Abel. After the informant scandal became public, Rackauckas established a special committee of legal experts to investigate the office's practices and suggest reforms. The committee's report, released on December 30, criticized the office for a "win-at-all-costs mentality," and concludes, "There is an immediate need for stronger leadership, training, supervision, mentoring, and oversight to change the culture." In 2012, Orange County had the 6th largest county death row in the US and was part of the 2% of US counties responsible for more than half of the country's death row. Since then, it has produced 5 more death sentences, more than all California counties except Riverside and Los Angeles. IFRAME: //www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or g/node/6343&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=95&font=arial&height= 25&action=recommend&colorscheme=light&locale=en_US&send=false in: * Arbitrariness * What's New * California * Prosecutorial Misconduct * Read more * 665 reads Prosecutor Says Change Needed if Wyoming Wants to Keep the Death Penalty Posted: January 5, 2016 Natrona County, Wyoming District Attorney Mike Blonigen (pictured) recently called for a reconsideration of the state's death penalty after a federal judge overturned the death sentence of Dale Wayne Eaton, a decade after Blonigen obtained it in 2004. At the time U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson reversed Eaton's sentence in 2014, Eaton was the only person on Wyoming's death row. Judge Johnson ruled that Eaton had received ineffective representation, in part because of inadequate funding of the Wyoming Public Defender's Office. Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead requested that the state legislature appropriate $1 million over the next two years to pay for Eaton's defense and another $25,000 to study whether the state is adequately funding prosecutors and public defenders. However, Johnson subsequently barred Wyoming from conducting a new death penalty hearing when the state failed to timely appoint new lawyers for Eaton who were not affiliated with the public defender's office. Blonigen said the state legislature needs to take a serious look at the issue of capital punishment: "You've got to have the resources and have the commitment to it to carry through with it," he said. "I think the Legislature has to decide do we really want this or not. If we really want it, then we have to change some things." Wyoming has not carried out an execution since 1992, and has not sentenced anyone to death since Eaton was sentenced in 2004. IFRAME: //www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or g/node/6342&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=95&font=arial&height= 25&action=recommend&colorscheme=light&locale=en_US&send=false in: * What's New * Costs * New Voices * Wyoming * Read more * 2,141 reads EDITORIALS: Newspapers Stress Findings from DPIC's 2015 Year End Report Posted: January 4, 2016 Several newspapers across the country featured themes from DPIC's 2015 Year End Report in editorials and opinion pieces at the end of December: "Once broadly accepted, capital punishment is increasingly a fringe practice. A handful of states conduct nearly all executions. Four — Texas, Missouri, Georgia and Florida — carried out 93 percent of them in 2015. Sixty-three percent of new death sentences came from a mere 2 percent of U.S. counties, a group with a history of disproportionately using the death penalty.Bad policy encourages this sort of excess: Three states — Alabama, Delaware and Florida — do not require juries to be unanimous when recommending a death sentence. A quarter of new sentences came from split juries in these states." "Not only did executions drop in 2015, but the number of people sentenced to death also hit an historic low, the center said. That could be due to a growing skepticism by jurors of a system susceptible to manipulation through coerced testimony or other misconduct...— or there could be some other reason for a decline in convictions on capital punishment charges...What is clear is that there's no correcting an execution if later evidence shows the prosecution was wrong...Abolition is the direction of the future, and the U.S. should join." "[T]he fact that new death sentences were at an all-time low in Texas this year is reason to applaud...Texas’ declines mirror numbers across the nation. According to the Death Penalty Information Center’s year-end report, death sentences dropped 33 percent from 2014, with 49 people being sentenced to death this year. Just six states carried out executions, the fewest since 1998...Confidence in the system’s integrity is waning. It should only follow that support for the death penalty follows suit." "In 2015, in fact, otherwise proudly liberal California led the nation in death sentences with 14, even as the national number dropped to 49, the fewest since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Of California’s death sentences, eight were in Riverside County (including five of the eight Latinos sentenced to death nationwide), plus three in Los Angeles and one in Orange...If we’re going to have the death penalty, shouldn’t it be at least somewhat consistent across the state?" "As Florida becomes more isolated in its administration of the death penalty, the state is getting deserved scrutiny for problems with the practice. A year-end report from the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center found just three states — Alabama, California and Florida — accounted for more than half of the nation’s new death sentences in 2015. More than a quarter of this year’s death sentences were imposed by Florida and Alabama after non-unanimous jury recommendations of death — a practice allowed in just those two states and Delaware. ...As Florida officials have pushed to speed up the pace of executions, the Death Penalty Information Center found the rest of the country is heading in the opposite direction. A dozen states haven’t executed anyone in at least nine years, while 18 states and the District of Columbia have outlawed the death penalty altogether. ... As most other states move away from the death penalty, it is long past time for Florida to follow their lead." "A Reading Eagle investigation in October found nearly one in five Pennsylvania inmates sentenced to death the past decade were represented by attorneys disciplined for professional misconduct at some point in their careers. And the majority of these disciplined attorneys had been found by Pennsylvania courts to be ineffective in at least one capital case. More than 150 inmates sentenced to death in the U.S. have been exonerated since 1973, according to data compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington. Sooner or later an innocent person will be executed, if it hasn't happened already...It is time to end the death penalty in Pennsylvania." (This editorial announced the end of the Eagle's prior position supporting the death penalty under limited circumstances.) IFRAME: //www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.or g/node/6341&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=95&font=arial&height= 25&action=recommend&colorscheme=light&locale=en_US&send=false in: * Arbitrariness * What's New * Editorials * California * Innocence * Pennsylvania * Texas * Read more * 2,314 reads Pages * 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * 5 * 6 * 7 * 8 * 9 * … * next › * last » * 3520523 reads DPIC 2015 Year End Report DEATH PENALTY USE IN 2015 DECLINES SHARPLY Resources * Full text of the report. * VIDEO: "The Death Penalty in the U.S. " (A 2 minute video summary of the Year End Report). * INFOGRAPHIC: "The Death Penalty in the U.S.". * DPIC's Press Release. * 2015 Death Sentences by Name, Race, and County From DPIC Featured Links Battle Scars: Military Veterans and the Death Penalty "Battle Scars: Military Veterans and the Death Penalty" Innocence Public Opinion Latest News BREAKING NEWS (1/7): Florida has executed Oscar Ray Bolin. It was the first execution of 2016. Florida has executed 11 prisoners since 1/1/14. __________________________________________________________________ DPIC Podcasts DPIC Podcast Series: We have begun a new set of podcasts on the death penalty in each state, each with interesting historical facts. The following are now available: Michigan, Wisconsin, Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Vermont, Massachusetts, District of Columbia, Rhode Island, and New Jersey. Check out our podcasts now! Also listen to DPIC's podcasts on death penalty issues. Connect with DPIC Home | RSS | About DPIC | Privacy Policy ©2016 Death Penalty Information Center