A new organization--Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty--made its debut at the recent 2013 Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference near Washington, D.C. The group questions whether capital punishment aligns with conservative principles and includes prominent conservative leaders from across the country, including Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, Roy Brown, former Montana House Majority Leader, and Richard Viguerie (pictured), a prominent consultant for the conservative movement. Mr. Sekulow noted, "Conservatives should question how the death penalty actually works in order to stay true to small government, reduction in wasteful spending, and respect for human life." Mr. Brown added, “It might be easier to allow the death penalty to continue if it were less expensive than life in prison; if the courts treated rich and poor equally; if it truly was a deterrent and if everyone that was executed was guilty. But the death penalty is none of those things.”
The Dallas Morning News used the recent repeal of the death penalty in Maryland as an occasion to advocate for death-penalty reform in Texas. The editors commented on the overall impropriety of capital punishment: “At best, the death penalty is selectively used state-supported retribution, which has no place in a civilized society.” The editorial supported six pending bills aimed at improving the fairness of the death penalty. One bill would bar the use of informant testimony in death penalty cases if the testimony was obtained from a witness or accomplice in exchange for favorable treatment. Another bill would create criteria based on scientific standards for courts deciding whether a defendant has an intellectual disability that would exclude him from execution. A third bill would introduce a Racial Justice Act into law to protect against bias in death sentencing. Read full editorial below.
Former Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau has joined two other former prosecutors in filing an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of William Kuenzel, an Alabama death row inmate sentenced to death in 1988. New evidence emerged in 2010 raising doubts about his guilt. According to Morgenthau's brief, two witnesses who testified against Kuenzel gave entirely different accounts that did not identify him when they first met with authorities. One of the witnesses admitted being involved in the murder. Morgenthau, who retired from the D.A.'s office in 2009 at the age of 90, asked Gil Garcetti, former Los Angeles District Attorney, and E. Michael McCann, former District Attorney of Milwaukee, to join him in asking the Supreme Court to hear the case. The three men each served over 30 years as prosecutor, and oversaw a total of more than 7 million cases. Morgenthau said he always opposed the death penalty and felt he had to act in Kuenzel's case because it reminded him of the Central Park Jogger case, in which he helped reverse the convictions of five teenagers originally convicted of rape and attempted murder. Of the death penalty, which was in place in New York from 1995 to 2007, he said, “[W]e reduced murder by 90 percent and never once sought it.”
Christopher Price is on death row in Alabama for the murder of a church minister in 1991. His current attorneys have asked the courts to enforce the ruling of Gideon v. Wainwright, the landmark 1963 decision guaranteeing the right to counsel for all defendants. According to Price's appeal, his trial attorney failed to provide even a rudimentary defense during a penalty trial that lasted only 30 minutes. The attorney neglected to "investigate his background for potential mitigation evidence," to "speak prior to trial with his family members, friends and schoolteachers," and to "retain a mental health expert despite [the attorney's] previous acknowledgment that a mental health report was essential to presenting a mitigation case." The brief continued, "The only mitigation witness that trial counsel called was Petitioner's mother, Judy Files. Trial counsel had not previously interviewed Mrs. Files, nor had she prepared Mrs. Files to testify. Even more critically, trial counsel was unaware that Mrs. Files had physically and mentally abused Petitioner throughout his life and had allowed several men with whom she had romantic relationships to routinely physically, sexually, and emotionally abuse Petitioner as well." The lower courts have held that even if the attorney's performance was deficient, it was not enough to warrant relief. On March 4, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Price's case.
On March 15, the Maryland House of Delegates passed (82-56) a bill to abolish the death penalty for future crimes. The same bill passed the Maryland Senate on March 6. Governor Martin O’Malley has pledged to sign the bill, which will make Maryland the 18th state to abolish the death penalty, and the sixth to do so in the last six years. O'Malley said, “I’ve felt compelled to do everything I could to change our law, repeal the death penalty, so that we could focus on doing the things that actually work to reduce violent crime.” Maryland currently has five people on death row, but they will not be affected by the legislation. Prior to 2007, no legislature had abolished the death penalty since the 1960s. The other 5 states to recently abolish the death penalty are New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, Illinois and Connecticut.
A new study regarding the use of the death penalty in Harris County, Texas, was released in conjunction with the filing of an appeal by Harris County death row inmate, Duane Buck. The research was conducted by Professor Raymond Paternoster of the University of Maryland, who examined over 500 murder cases in the county. The study found that, in cases with circumstances similar to Buck’s and during the time in which he was tried, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office sought the death penalty 3.5 times more often when the defendant was African-American than when the defendant was white. When the cases were submitted to Harris County (Houston) juries, the net result was a greater proportion of African-American defendants ended with death sentences than white defendants. Buck's case is also controversial because an From DPIC
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Click the above video to see the latest developments in the death penalty.  LATEST NEWS (May 14): A bill to repeal Nebraska's death penalty was not able to overcome a filibuster vote and will not be voted on this year. The vote to end the filibuster was 28-21, but 33 votes were needed. This was the first time since 1979 that a majority of senators sided with those seeking to end the death penalty. (Journal Star). |
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Clustering of the Death Penalty A new section of DPIC's website demonstrates that capital punishment is actually carried out in only a small percentage of U.S. jurisdictions. For example, one map shows that less than 1% of counties in death penalty states accounted for 30% of the executions in the U.S. since 1976. Similarly, less than 1% of the counties were responsible for 27% of current death row inmates and 35% of recent death sentences. Click maps to enlarge
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NEWS: (May 7). Mississippi Supreme Court granted a stay of execution for 
(May 2). Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland signed the bill repealing the death penalty for future offenses. The death penalty had been part of Maryland's law for over 300 years.