Year End Report on the Death Penalty

[pumpkinpie]

DPIC Releases 2008
Year End Report on the Death Penalty

Highlights from the Report

Decline in the Number of Executions and Death Sentences

37 executions took place in 2008, marking a 14-year low and continuing a downward trend that began in 2000.
95% of all executions occurred in the South in 2008; 49% were in one state - Texas.
The annual number of death sentences has dropped by 60% since the 1990s.

Innocence and Clemency

Four death row inmates were exonerated and four had their sentences commuted to life in prison without parole during the course of this year. The total number of exonerations since 1973 is 130.

Costs of the Death Penalty

A California commission reported that the state is spending $138 million per year on a death penalty system that they described as "broken" and "close to collapse."
A study in Maryland indicated that the state had spent $37 million for each execution when all the costs of the death penalty were included.
With the average time spent on death row increasing to 12.7 years in 2007, death penalty cases continue to place a significant financial burden on state budgets.
State supreme courts in Utah and New Mexico have warned that the death penalty would be stopped unless more funding is provided for indigent defense.

Expansion of the Death Penalty Denied

In June, the Supreme Court rejected the expansion of the death penalty to non-homicide crimes against individuals in Kennedy v. Louisiana.

www.deathpenaltyinfo.org

[happyhaddock]

Web Posted: 12/13/2008

Death penalty system fatally flawed
By Sam Millsap - Express-News

Sam Millsap is a former Bexar County district attorney.

According to a report released last week by the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty — Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2008: The Year in Review — this year Texas juries condemned the fewest number of people to death in more than 30 years.

As of Dec. 10, a total of 10 people (nine men and one woman) had been sentenced to death in Texas in 2008.

Perhaps this reflects the public's growing uneasiness with the death penalty or prosecutors' recognition that the costs of the ultimate punishment — both human and financial — are too high. Or perhaps my fellow Texans have come to share my realization that a fallible system that puts people to death simply cannot be trusted.

Evidence of misplaced trust in the death penalty system was on stark display on Aug. 25, when a Collin County court dismissed all charges against death row inmate Michael Blair for the 1993 rape and murder of 7-year-old Ashley Estell.

After the results of new DNA testing failed to connect him to the crime, those involved in the case agreed that there was not enough evidence to uphold the conviction. Blair had spent 14 years on death row. Michael Blair was the fourth person exonerated from death row nationally in 2008 and the 130th overall since 1973, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

DNA played a role in just 17 of these cases. Blair is the ninth person exonerated from death row in Texas.

Such willingness to admit a mistake has come too late for several inmates who claimed to be innocent of the crimes for which they were executed.

In an interesting turn of events, the Texas Forensic Science Commission agreed this past August to a request from the Innocence Project to investigate the possibility of misconduct in the arson case of Cameron Todd Willingham.

Willingham was convicted in 1991 of setting a fire that killed his three daughters; he was executed by the State of Texas in 2004. According to the Innocence Project, a panel of leading experts later determined that the fire was not arson and that forensic experts at the time of Willingham's trial should have known that the fire was an accident. The commission will investigate the faulty forensic analysis used to convict Willingham.

Similar analysis was used in 2004 to exonerate Ernest Ray Willis, who had spent 17 years on Texas' death row for a crime that did not occur. Should the results of this investigation rule out arson, it will further undermine the credibility and integrity of the Texas death penalty system — though clearly too late to benefit Mr. Willingham.

In another Texas case, that of Carlos De Luna, a documentary film released earlier this year continued to call into question his guilt. “At the Death House Door” is based on an in-depth inquiry by journalists with the Chicago Tribune. To date, no official investigation has taken place, although strong evidence points to another suspect in the crime (now deceased) for which De Luna was executed 19 years ago.

We cannot sanction a death penalty system that gets it right most of the time. An honest assessment of the problems associated with the death penalty is long overdue.

I urge Texas lawmakers to consider the cases of Cameron Todd Willingham, Carlos De Luna, Michael Blair, Ernest Ray Willis and others when they reconvene in January and to recognize the ultimate fallibility of a system that no longer deserves our trust... or our support.

When it comes to human life, a system that gets it right most of the time should not exist at all.

[happyhaddock]

Death Penalty Roundup
By TChris, Section Death Penalty
Posted on Sun Dec 28, 2008

• Following a nationwide trend, death sentences have been declining in North Carolina over the past ten years. Only one North Carolina defendant was sentenced to death in 2008, the smallest number since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment. The jury rejected death in eleven of the state's twelve capital trials.

• An 18-year-old who set fire to a house in Youngstown, killing two women and four children, was sentenced to life without parole after a jury rejected the death penalty.

• The Boston Globe chastises New Hampshire for imposing its first death sentence since 1939.

• Margaret Levy makes the case for abolishing the Connecticut death penalty -- not only to avoid the risk of executing the innocent, but because it is wrong to punish by killing. Period.

• Linda Greene argues that the death penalty is arbitrary, racist, elitist, expensive, error-prone, and wrong for Indiana.

[happyhaddock]

Two Minutes With ... Sam Millsap
Organizer, Pennsylvania Death Penalty Moratorium Coalition
by Francesca Heintz


Former Bexar County (Texas) District Attorney Sam Millsap used to support the death penalty, but in the past few years, he has toured the country speaking to audiences about why he now believes in the complete abolition of capital punishment. Though Millsap says this conversion came over a series of years, he credits a specific case as the catalyst to turning him into an outspoken opponent of the death penalty.

Ruben Cantu was convicted and executed in 1993 based on compelling eyewitness testimony while Millsap was D.A. But 12 years later, an eyewitness recanted and, though Millsap says there is no way of deciding what version of the truth to believe, the very nature of human error makes it impossible for the system to protect the innocent completely. Millsap, along with Barry Scheck from The Innocence Project and 20 former convicts who spent time on death row before being acquitted of all crimes, will be in Philadelphia Friday to announce the launch of the Pennsylvania Death Penalty Moratorium Coalition.

City Paper: What are the strongest arguments against the death penalty?

Sam Millsap: The two arguments that I respond to and those that I advance when I speak are instrumental arguments. The first is that the system is not perfect; it's driven by human beings who make mistakes even on their best days. The second instrumental argument that I think is really important and is becoming more and more important as we get deeper into experimenting with the death penalty is that the cost of taking the defendant through trial and through execution is substantially greater than the cost of incarcerating that defendant for life.

CP: Do you think that morality should be taken into consideration?

SM: I'm not a person who opposes the death penalty on moral grounds though I respect those who do and certainly recognize the moral argument.

CP: If there was a foolproof way to determine someone's guilt, would you believe in capital punishment?

SM: There is no foolproof way to determine guilt. The system we have is a wonderful system for all kinds of cases, but it's driven by human beings and they're not perfect even when they're doing their very best. That's why I say that we have to abolish the death penalty; an execution can't be undone.

CP: Do you think that Philadelphia in particular should be addressed because of accusations of discrimination against the poor and people of color in death-sentence practices?

SM: That's true all over the country. The fact that the death penalty is carried out in an arbitrary way is true everywhere and not unique to Philadelphia. There aren't any rich people on death row anywhere in the country.

CP: How do you see your message getting out around the country?

SM: It's like any other political issue. What has to happen is members of the legislature have to hear from people and have to be moved by something. What we're seeing in a number of states is a very encouraging movement toward abolition.

CP: What do you think the future of capital punishment will be in the U.S.?

SM: I believe that the death penalty will be abolished in the U.S. but it will be a slow process and a state-by-state process. I think it's only a matter of time before these things happen; the tide is running out on the death penalty in the United States.

[happyhaddock]

Following a nationwide trend, death sentences have been declining in North Carolina over the past ten years.

Many have put that down to a lack of certainty caused by so many cases being reversed long after conviction.

One could also take the view that the high failure rates of medical personnel in hospitals is a factor. After all, given the choice between saving one person's life and executing someone else few would choose the execution. In a hospital, everyone there on the medical staff is dedicated to healing, and yet the failure rates are very high indeed. So if humans can't be accurate enough to save life, how can they be accurate enough to take it?