Christopher Slobogin, Professor of Law and Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, has written an evaluation of Florida's death penalty to be published in a forthcoming edition of the Elon University Law Review. The evaluation is based on a study by an assessment team sponsored by the American Bar Association. Florida is one of the leading states in sentencing people to death, but it also has the most death row exonerations of any state in the country. Florida was chosen by the ABA to be one of eight death penalty states reviewed under its Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project. The purpose of this project was to allow states to identity and eliminate flaws in their death penalty system. The Florida Assessment Team was led by Prof. Slobogin and was instructed to investigate the following aspects of death penalty administration: "police investigation procedures; the use of DNA evidence; crime laboratories and medical examiners; prosecutorial discretion; defense services; jury instructions; the judicial role; the direct appeal process; state post-conviction and federal habeas proceedings; clemency proceedings; the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities; and the treatment of people with mental illness and mental retardation."
On November 23, Kentucky Public Advocate Ed Monahan and Louisville Metro Chief Public Defender Dan Goyette called on the governor and the state's Attorney General to stay all executions until an assessment team formed by the American Bar Association can objectively review the state's death penalty. Monahan and Goyette wrote letters asking Attorney General Jack Conway not to request any further execution warrants and asking Governor Steven Beshear not to sign execution warrants until the ABA Assessment Team has concluded its study and issued a final report.
James Tyrone Woodson's death sentence was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 because the jury had not been allowed to consider any mitigating factors in his life or about his peripheral role in the crime. The Court not only rejected Woodson's death sentence, but held that a mandatory death penalty system was unconstitutional. Woodson had been convicted in 1974 of first-degree murder, which was automatically punishable by the death penalty under North Carolina law. Woodson had been in a car during the robbery and murder, and he maintained that he was threatened to assist with the robbery. Woodson and 120 other death row inmates' lives were spared because of the Supreme Court ruling. He eventually became eligible for parole and was released in 1993. Since his release, Woodson has led a crime-free life. He used to be the kitchen manager at the Raleigh Rescue Mission. He now has a job in Raleigh and preaches at Wake Correctional Center. "You have to want to change. Nobody can make you change," he said recently about his work helping others. He continued, "There's a choice in the matter in life itself. Do you want to live? Do you want to be helpful to another individual because you've been helped?"
The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates is a book by John Temple about the courageous work of a death penalty defense attorney in the south. Ken Rose is an attorney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in North Carolina. He has handled many capital cases, but the focus of this book is his defense of Bo Jones, a mentally handicapped farmhand convicted of a murder that occurred in 1987 and sentenced to death. The case highlights issues such as inadequate defense, mental retardation, mental illness and witness testimony. Based on over four years of behind-the-scenes reporting, The Last Lawyer tells the story of how Rose's work eventually led to the dismissal of all charges against Jones in 2008.
Virginia has not had a death verdict from a jury since March 2008, the longest stretch of time without a death verdict since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s. Nationally, there has also been a decline in death sentences: according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 115 death sentences in 2007, 65% less than the 326 that were handed down in 1995. In Virginia, part of this decline might be attributed to a change in state law made effective in 1995 that eliminated the possibility of parole with a life sentence. Scott Sunby, professor of law at Washington and Lee University, said he believes that this decline can also be attributed to the rising cost of winning death sentences, more effective defense lawyers, and a dwindling public desire for capital punishment. (There are currently 14 prisoners on Virginia's death row; in 1995 there were 55 inmates on the row. Virginia is second to Texas in the number of executions carried out since 1976.)
On November 16, the United States Supreme Court accepted for review and handed down a per curiam decision in Wong v. Belmontes (No. 08-1263). The Court reinstated Fernando Belmontes' death sentence and overturned the decision of the Ninth Circuit granting relief because of ineffectiveness of counsel. Belmontes was sentenced to death for murdering a woman during a robbery in 1981 in California. The appeals court ruled in 2008 that Belmontes' lawyer had represented him incompetently by neglecting to introduce evidence of family strife and depression that would have likely led to a different sentence. The Supreme Court assumed that the attorney should have presented more evidence but concluded it would not have made any difference in sentencing. Justice Stevens issued a concurring opinion stating that he believed the Supreme Court had erred in a previous consideration of this same case.
The Bob Edwards on Sirius XM Radio recently explored the high costs of the death penalty and the views of the country's police chiefs as discussed in DPIC's latest report, "From DPIC
DPIC Releases New Report on Costs of the Death Penalty and Police Chiefs' ViewsThe Death Penalty Information Center has released its latest report, "Smart on Crime: Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis." The report combines an analysis of the costs of the death penalty with a newly released national poll of police chiefs who put capital punishment at the bottom of their law enforcement priorities.
Click here to read the report. From the Executive Summary: The death penalty in the U.S. is an enormously expensive and wasteful program with no clear benefits. All of the studies on the cost of capital punishment conclude it is much more expensive than a system with life sentences as the maximum penalty. In a time of painful budget cutbacks, states are pouring money into a system that results in a declining number of death sentences and executions that are almost exclusively carried out in just one area of the country. As many states face further deficits, it is an appropriate time to consider whether maintaining the costly death penalty system is being smart on crime. ¶¶¶ The nation’s police chiefs rank the death penalty last in their priorities for effective crime reduction. The officers do not believe the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder, and they rate it as one of most inefficient uses of taxpayer dollars in fighting crime. Criminologists concur that the death penalty does not effectively reduce the number of murders. ¶¶¶ Around the country, death sentences have declined 60% since 2000 and executions have declined almost as much. Yet maintaining a system with 3,300 people on death row and supporting new prosecutions for death sentences that likely will never be carried out is becoming increasingly expensive and harder to justify. The money spent to preserve this failing system could be directed to effective programs that make society safer. ¶¶¶
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