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Death Penalty

3350 people in the United States currently are under a death sentence. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, nearly 1100 men, women, children, and mentally ill people have been shot, hanged, asphyxiated, lethally injected, and electrocuted by States and the federal government.

Mounting evidence shows that innocent people have been sentenced to death and that serious legal errors infect the administration of capital punishment. For every eight people executed in this country, one innocent person on death row has been identified and exonerated. In response to growing concerns about reliability, many states have suspended executions or experienced a decline in the use of capital punishment, but most southern states have continued to condemn and execute large numbers of people who disproportionately are poor and racial minorities.

Alabama currently has 200 men and women on its death row. Alabama sentences more people to death per capita than any other state, due in part to elected judges who are allowed to override a jury’s verdict of life. Alabama is the only state in the country that allows elected state court judges to override jury verdicts of life imprisonment and impose death sentences without any limiting standard. About 23% of the people on Alabama's death row received a life verdict that was overridden by a trial judge.

Alabama is also the only state in the country without a state-funded program to provide legal assistance to death row prisoners. Over half of the 200 people currently under sentence of death in Alabama were represented at trial by appointed counsel whose compensation for trial preparation was capped by law at just $1000.

News

U.S. Supreme Court Holds Defendants Have Right to Question Forensic Witnesses

July 2, 2009On June 25, 2009, the United States Supreme Court held that prosecutors cannot use forensic reports as evidence in a criminal trial without giving the defendant a chance to question the analyst who prepared the report. The decision reaffirms the Sixth Amendment right of criminal defendants to confront witnesses against them.

U.S. Supreme Court Says Prisoners Have No Right to Test DNA Evidence That Could Exonerate Them

June 25, 2009On June 18, 2009, the United States Supreme Court held that prisoners have no right to obtain DNA evidence for testing that could prove they are innocent, even if the prisoner pays for the testing himself.

State of Alabama Executes Jack Trawick

June 11, 2009Tonight Jack Trawick was executed by the State of Alabama. Mr. Trawick was convicted and sentenced to death in Jefferson County, Alabama, for the 1992 sexual assault and murder of Stephanie Gach. Mr. Trawick was the fifth person put to death by the State of Alabama this year.

EJI Director Bryan Stevenson Wins Gruber Justice Prize

June 11, 2009On June 10, 2009, the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation announced that it will award its 2009 Justice Prize to EJI Executive Director Bryan Stevenson and to the European Roma Rights Centre for their "tireless advocacy of human rights for individuals belonging to oppressed groups that historically have not had an effective voice in, or access to, the justice system."

Alabama Passes Bill Restricting Access to DNA Testing for Death Row Prisoners

June 5, 2009Alabama lawmakers recently passed a new law that requires the state to collect DNA samples from everyone who is arrested for a felony, including children. The law, which passed on the last day of the recently-concluded legislative session, also restricts access to DNA testing for people convicted of a capital offense and reduces the opportunity for a wrongfully convicted person to prove his innocence through DNA evidence.
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