Death Penalty News

New Jersey’s highest court ruled Thursday that expert testimony about shaken baby syndrome is scientifically unreliable and inadmissible in two upcoming trials, a decision that comes as the long-held medical diagnoses have come under increased scrutiny. The New Jersey Supreme Court determined that a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, which is also known as abusive head trauma, is not generally accepted within the “biomechanical community” and is therefore not “sufficiently reliable” for admission at the trials.

As Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards (pictured) considers the clemency petitions filed by 51 of the state’s 57 death row prisoners, advocates and journalists have noted the similarities between Louisiana’s death penalty system and that of Illinois, where Governor George Ryan commuted the sentences of all 167 people on death row in 2003. Both states have had high numbers of death row exonerations stemming from systemic misconduct, death sentences in both states are concentrated in a small number of jurisdictions, and both governors have expressed serious personal concerns about the use of capital punishment.

Stephen Oliphant’s recent study on the death penalty’s effect on homicide rates published in Criminology & Public Policy found “no evidence of a deterrent effect attributable to death penalty statutes.”  Oliphant first discusses deterrence theory, which “posits that punishment, or the threat of punishment, discourages individuals from committing crime,” and its role in capital punishment discourse, where proponents of the death penalty have argued that the threat of the death penalty discourages homicide, and that abolition (or a halt to the use of the death penalty) would lead to increased murder rates. The research focused on four states which imposed moratoria on the death penalty—Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Washington—and examined the homicide rates in each state in the years preceding and following the state’s institution of a death penalty moratorium. 

Behind prison’s steel doors, a staggering number of people are held in isolation for months, years, even decades, and many will leave broken in mind and body. Now, some states are realizing they’ve gone too far in the name of punishment.  Lois Pullano used to be of the mind that society was safer and better off with “bad people” locked up behind bars. That solitary confinement was an acceptable punishment for the crimes people committed, and that the incarcerated were getting what they deserved. Then Pullano’s 15-year-old son, who began showing signs of a mental illness at the age of 4, was placed in an adult prison in Michigan. Then her boy, who grew up loving the outdoors and spent hours playing in the woods, was placed in solitary confinement’s concrete box. Then the Michigan mom received images in the mail showing her son bloodied and shackled. “For us to take human beings and lock them up in this way and heap on more and more punishment that drives them to madness, it doesn’t ...

New Jersey has banned the use of ‘gay panic’ and ‘trans panic’ defence in the state. The controversial legal strategy, which is mostly used in assault or murder cases, allows people to defend themselves by claiming they were driven to violence after discovering their victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity. On Tuesday (21 January), Democratic Governor Phil Murphy signed a bill that outlaws the use of the archaic defence in New Jersey, arguing that both ‘gay panic’ and ‘trans panic’ defences are “abhorrent” excuses for violence. “We will always stand with our LGBTQ+ community and promote full equality for all our residents,” he said in a statement. “Gay and trans panic defences are rooted in homophobia and abhorrent excuses that should never be used to justify violence against vulnerable populations. “With this new law, we are enacting critical measures to protect our friends and neighbors in the LGBTQ+ community.” Christian Fuscarino, Executive Directo...

A US man accused of beating his girlfriend's 2-year-old son to death allegedly told the boy to "put up his hands" to fight while the couple argued over groceries. Zachary Tricoche, 24, from Pennsauken, New Jersey, was arraigned on murder charges last week for allegedly killing Jamil Baskerville Jr. The youngster was sitting on a bed crying, upset after Tricoche pushed his mother during a row. Prosecutors say the boy's mother's boyfriend punched him in the chest. The strike caused him to fall backward and hit his head on the wall, authorities said. He was rushed to hospital after his mother dialed 911, but died a short time later. Doctors later said he succumbed to a devastating blow to his liver, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. During his first court appearance, Tricoche didn't enter a plea. His bail was set at US$1 million ($1.58 million) cash. Camden County prosecutors say the beating occurred Saturday night at a Pennsa...

A California Supreme Court justice, dissenting Monday in a death penalty decision, called for new rules to curb inaccurate eyewitness identification, a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The dissent came in a case in which the court decided 5 to 2 to uphold the death sentence of Ennis Reed, convicted of killing 2 people in Compton. Justice Goodwin Liu wrote the dissent, calling on the courts to better police eyewitness testimony. Justice Leondra Kruger did not sign Liu's dissent but wrote separately, saying she was dissenting in Reed's case for the reasons Liu cited. Reed was sentenced to death in 1999 for killing Amarilis Vasquez and Paul Moreland in separate incidents. Evidence at Reed's death penalty trial showed he had dropped out of school after 7th grade, when he was performing at the level of a 3rd- or 4th-grader, and had been convicted in 1992 of attempted murder for driving a car in which a passenger shot someone from the vehicle. In the ...

In August 1982, New Jersey reenacted the death penalty after the United State Supreme Court decision in Gregg v. Georgia reinstated capital punishment in bifurcated proceedings. The reinstatement was futile. No defendant convicted under the 1982 legislation was put to death—the last execution in New Jersey was in 1963. Thanks to the vigorous efforts of the Public Defender’s Office and other members of the defense bar, no defendant convicted under the 1982 legislation was put to death. In case after case, our Supreme Court concluded that capital punishment had not been fairly and rationally imposed. The Appellate Division in 2004 found the procedures by which capital punishment was imposed to be unconstitutional, and a legislatively created Death Penalty Study Commission recommended its abolition. Dec. 17 marks the 10th anniversary of the statute that abolished the death penalty and substituted life imprisonment without parole for those convicted of capital murder. Abolition ...

TRENTON — Two state lawmakers are looking to reverse New Jersey's landmark ban on the death penalty and restore the punishment for serious crimes. On Monday, Senators Steve Oroho (R-Sussex) and Jeff Van Drew (D-Cape May) introduced a bill that would restore capital punishment in certain murder cases, citing recent terror attacks and fatal ambushes of police officers across the United States as examples of crimes warranting the death penalty. New Jersey eliminated capital punishment nearly a decade ago, and the measure would have to be approved by the Democrat-controlled state Legislature in order to pass. Previous attempts to roll back the prohibition have failed in recent years, and opponents who shepherded the state death penalty ban into law vowed to fight any effort at repeal. But its sponsors say recent events merit a fresh look at allowing capital punishment in "extreme" cases. According to a copy of the bill obtained by NJ Advance Media on Monday...

The Connecticut Supreme Court on Thursday again said that it would be unconstitutional to execute inmates on the state's death row, upholding a decision from the same court last year effectively banning the death penalty in the state. In a decision in August, the state's justices ruled that Connecticut could not execute death-row inmates for crimes committed before the state largely abolished capital punishment. Under a law signed in 2012, Connecticut agreed to abandon the death penalty going forward, while also retaining it as an option for crimes committed before that bill became law. After an inmate named Eduardo Santiago - convicted of murdering someone in 2000 - challenged his death sentence, a divided Connecticut Supreme Court said last year that he could not be executed because the 2012 law "creates an impermissible and arbitrary distinction" between crimes committed before and after that measure went into effect. (Santiago was re-sentenced to life i...

Robert Greene Elliott On this date in 1927, Robert Greene Elliott — the “state electrician” who wired the majesty of the law to condemned men and women from Rockview, Pa. to Windsor, Vt. — had the busiest day of his illustrious career. Once just a regular prison electrician, Elliott graduated himself to the euphemism in 1926 and was soon the go-to angel of electric death throughout the northeast. He pulled the lever a reported 387 times for men and women who sat in the new killing device in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut and ( just one time ) Vermont; when John Dos Passos  wrote that “they have built the electric chair and hired the executioner to throw the switch,” well, he could have been talking about Elliott’s $150-per-head bounty. January 6, 1927 was a full and lucrative day for Elliott. He started the day off with a triple execution in Boston’s Charleston Prison — the first triple electrocution in Massachusetts history.*...

As the U.S. observes the 83rd birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., this is a perfect time to reflect on the slain civil rights leader, Nobel laureate and death penalty opponent. Much is known of the Montgomery bus boycott that he led in the 1950s. He fought for economic justice and the plight of the poor, and supported Memphis sanitation workers before he was assassinated. And he opposed the war in Vietnam. But rarely do we hear about his position against capital punishment. "I do not think that God approves the death penalty for any crime, rape and murder included," King said. "Capital punishment is against the better judgment of modern criminology, and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God." King's words are just as relevant now in the twenty-first century, over four decades after his death. America has reached a turning point in its application of capital punishment. Last year, Illinois abolished the death penalty ove...

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon on Tuesday said he would halt the execution of a death row inmate scheduled for next month and that he would allow no more executions in the state during his time in office. “It is time for Oregon to consider a different approach,” Governor Kitzhaber, a Democrat elected last fall, said in a news conference in Salem on Tuesday afternoon. “I refuse to be a part of this compromised and inequitable system any longer; and I will not allow further executions while I am governor.” Oregon, which uses lethal injection, has executed just two people since its voters approved the death penalty in 1984, and both of those inmates waived certain rights to appeal, making them so-called volunteers. The state, which has 37 inmates on death row, last executed someone in 1997. It has been one of at least seven states that allow the death penalty but have not used it in more than a decade, according to the Death Penalty Information Cen...