questions about the death penalty for research project

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142 Death Penalty Research Questions & Title Ideas

Are you looking for the best death penalty research title? StudyCorgi has got you covered! On this page, you’ll find plenty of death penalty titles and research questions about capital punishment. Feel free to use them for your debate, argumentative paper, and other writing assignments.

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If you’re wondering what to include in your research questions about death penalty, here are some subtopics you can consider.

• Is the Death Penalty Effective?
• Forensic Psychologist’s Role in Death Penalty Trial
• Death Penalty Abolishment: Arguments For and Against
• Death by Fire: The Death Penalty in Texas
• Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished?
• The Death Penalty: Arguments in Favor
• Violation of the Human Right to Life: Death Penalty
• Arguments Against Death Penalty Death penalties are nothing more than relics of the past. They were never enough to stop or even curb crime in any given country at any given period.
• Justification of the Death Penalty The paper argues that the death penalty is only justifiable under three circumstances, including retribution, deterrence and a form of communication.
• Death Penalty: The Utilitarianism Ethical Theory Utilitarianism gives moral justification for the death penalty as long as it promotes society’s total well-being, approval, and happiness.
• The Justness of Socrates’s Decision to Accept the Death Penalty Socrates was sentenced to death for instilling ‘wrong’ political views in the youth, but instead of escaping his death, the philosopher accepted it with honor.
• Death Penalty as Viewed within the Framework of Retributive Justice Modern society strives to develop compassion and understanding and reduce cruelty, as the value of human life and individuality is steadily growing.
• The Death Penalty: James Holmes’ Case The death penalty does not violate the Sixth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. It does shape certain procedural aspects.
• Aspects of Death Penalty Acceptance The death penalty is a form of punishment that should be used to justify criminals when they commit severe crimes concerning other people.
• Court Cases That Impacted to Death Penalty Daryl Atkins, who has an IQ of 59, was found guilty of murdering an Air Force enlisted man inside a convenience shop and was sentenced to death for his crime.
• Death Penalty and “Eye for an Eye” System The argument that the death penalty fits the narrative of the “eye for an eye” idea is valid. However, the state has the right to take away someone’s rights.
• The Advantages of the Death Penalty This paper claims that the death penalty justified from an ethic since it reduces the number of criminals, satisfy the victims, and the state will not suffer financial losses.
• Against the Death Penalty in the US The article presents arguments against the death penalty in the United States, focusing on its ineffectiveness as a deterrent, high costs, and racial and subjective biases.
• Death Penalty Position in Society Death penalty is the most severe punishment a government may sentence a person to for breaking the law, for example, by committing murder.
• Death Penalty in Case of Mental Illnesses American legal thought posited that the defendant’s mental competence was a necessary prerequisite for issuing and implementing the death penalty.
• Death Penalty: Contradictions Several crimes can lead to the death penalty: rape, racism, and murder. The death penalty has many and serious disadvantages and advantages.
• Juvenile Justice and the Death Penalty When discussing the death penalty, especially for juvenile perpetrators, three concepts are critical: justice, deterrence, and possibility of error.
• System of the Death Penalty in the United States Mitigation is a valuable and efficient tool for choosing an appropriate punishment during the juridical process and might be highly relevant for other social work practices.
• The Case Roper v. Simmons: Concept of National Consensus About Juvenile Death Penalty The aim of this work is to investigate the case of the national consensus concerning the issue of the juvenile death penalty on the example of the case Roper v. Simmons.
• Criminal Justice in Texas: Todd Willingham and Death Penalty The case of Cameron Todd Willingham was a controversial criminal justice case handled in Texas. The man was charged with the murder of his three young children by arson.
• Death Penalty: To Be or Not To Be? This essay is aimed at discussing the ongoing death penalty debate with reference to Adam Liptak’s and Stephen Breyer’s arguments.
• The Death Penalty in the United States The article “The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of the Death Penalty in the United States” examines the past, present, and possible future of capital punishment in the United States.
• Death Penalty Should Be Abolished in the United States The death penalty hinders the United States’ progress and should be criminalized to avoid more harm than good in the government’s efforts to realize the American dream.
• Racial Disparities in Death Penalty Sentencing The assessment of the racial disparities problem and its correlations with the principles of death penalty sentencing is of high importance from a legal and social perspective.
• Death Penalty: Practice and Ethics of the Use This paper discusses capital punishment as a legal measure, the history of the death penalty, and the appropriateness and relevance of this punishment.
• Legislative Issues in Texas: The Death Penalty This article discusses the problem of imperfect trials in Texas, which allows a person to be mistakenly executed.
• Judicial Error and the Death Penalty This research paper provides a critical analysis of the feasibility of stopping the death penalty in the United States through the lens of the innocence of victims.
• Zimbabwe and Zambia Death Penalty Comparison The post compares capital punishment in Zimbabwe and Zambia, last death sentence dates, and methods of execution.
• Death Penalty Debates in the United States: Inhumane Practice The process of the death penalty is highly flawed, and there are numerous ethical and practical challenges that suggest that capital punishment should be abolished.
• Death Penalty and Other Issues That Surround It In the United States, capital punishment has been used for a long period of time and it is still practiced today. This paper will seek to analyze death penalty and related issues.
• Death Penalty: Legal and Moral Issues Discussion of the legal and moral issues that literally are of life and death importance and is a major barometer when measuring a society’s collective conscience.
• The Death Penalty in the USA The death penalty in the USA exists in some states, and it must be to discipline people and to threaten them from murders and other great crimes.
• Should Death Penalty Be Abolished in the US? This essay examines whether the death penalty is an effective deterrent, and should it be abolished in the US.
• Key Points for Abolishing the Death Penalty in the USA This briefing paper is presented to American people so that all doubts and plans of retaining the death penalty despite all the Supreme Court rulings and the bad effects of it shall henceforth be erased from our minds.
• Death Penalty as a Cruel Murder While many arguments have been put forward for and against it, there is no doubt that the Death Penalty is nothing but a cruel murder perpetrated by the State.
• Death Penalty Validity as a Form of Punishment The paper assesses the validity of the death penalty as a form of punishment for controlling the increasing crime rates and tries to provide a solution or an option that can eliminate an extreme step.
• Death Penalty Abolition: Why It Is Needed? The death penalty should be done away with and instead replaced by a more humane form of punishing criminals irrespective of the intensity of the offense.
• Participation in Government: The Death Penalty The death penalty is also referred to as capital punishment and is commonly reserved for capital offenses. The term capital has its origins in the Latin word capita.
• The Death Penalty and Its Basic Reasons The death penalty also known as capital punishment is the execution of a person by the state as punishment for a crime.
• Should the United States Abolish the Death Penalty? Being the agent responsible for the administration of the death penalty, the state is the chief proponent of the same as a form of punishment.
• Death Penalty from a Prison Officer’s Perspective The death penalty can be considered as an ancient form of punishment in relation to the type of crime that had been committed.
• Death Penalty and Its Theoretical Justification The activity of the justice system equally depends on the fairness of the justification and the validity of the punishment.
• Death Penalty and Utilitarian Ethics This paper will analyze the ethical grounds of utilizing the death penalty for recidivist violent criminals based on Bentham’s utilitarianism.
• “What Will Doom the Death Penalty” by Daniel LaChance This reading essay summarizes, explains, and evaluates the main points of the reading: “What Will Doom the Death Penalty: Capital Punishment, Another Failed Government Program?” by Daniel LaChance.
• Death Penalty from Religious and Historical Standpoints The paper evaluates the benefits and analyzes the death penalty from a modern, religious, and historical perspective.
• What Will Doom the Death Penalty? The increasing levels of crime in the United States encouraged more people to embrace the idea of capital punishment. This discussion gives a detailed analysis of this article.
• Death Penalty Trends in American Justice System This paper discusses the death penalty abolition in Illinois, Innocence Project, sentencing of the mentally retarded individuals, and the case of Stanley Williams.
• Death Penalty and Its Issues Serious criminals have usually imposed a death sentence. This type of punishment continues to exist, even nowadays. However, it seems completely irrelevant in a humanistic society.
• Roots of Public Support for the Death Penalty In his article, Daniel LaChance analyzes the phenomenon of the death penalty in America and the social attitude towards it. LaChance expresses a negative attitude.
• Death Penalty as Unjustified Measure Nowadays The person living in the 21st century should believe that the death penalty simply increases violence and grief and does not help the victim’s close ones recover from their pain.
• Death Penalty: History and Rationale After WWII, the death penalty was limited through the creation of the international Human Rights Doctrines. The procedure of death punishment became more humane.
• The Death Penalty and Mentally Retarded Capital Offenders The present paper attempts to discuss causes of wrongful conviction of capital offenders and the psychological assessment criteria that could be used by forensic psychologists.
• Position on the Death Penalty Capital punishment remains a contested issue in many societies across the globe. Many countries have abolished this form of punishment. Such countries believe that the malpractice is unethical.
• Is Death Penalty Adequate? The death penalty is inadequate, as it leads to the punishment of not guilty people, feeling of insecurity, high volume of stress, cruelty of the execution process.
• Whether Death Penalty Can Be Applied Fairly? This paper seeks to establish that corporal punishment is not the best way to correct wrongdoers. It shows how death penalty is applicable and effective.
• The Debate Over Whether the Death Penalty Is Just or Unjust
• Death Penalty and Its Deterrent Effect of Murder Rates in Society
• The Death Penalty and Its Effects on America
• Potential Savings From Abolition of the Death Penalty in North Carolina
• Pros and Cons Side of the International and Domestic Legislation on the Death Penalty
• Ethical Issues either for or Against the Death Penalty
• The Pros and Cons of Life Imprisonment and the Death Penalty
• Religious and Morality Issues of Death Penalty
• The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Death Penalty in the United States
• The Death Penalty and Its Effect on the Social Position of the Criminal
• Marxist Ideology and the Death Penalty
• The Relationship Between Race & the Use of the Death Penalty
• Thailand Should Kept Death Penalty for Certain Crime
• How Can Death Penalty Prevent Repeat Offenders?
• The Death Penalty and New Studies of Disparate Racial Impact
• Death Row and Death Penalty in the United States
• The Death Penalty Preserves Human Dignity
• Death Penalty Support and Argument Rebuttal
• The Death Penalty and Mental Illness
• Should the Death Penalty Be Reinstated in the UK?
• The Death Penalty Should Be Removed to Avoid Wrongly Punishing the Innocent
• Life Sentence Without Parole – Better Than Death Penalty
• Does the Death Penalty Breach Human Rights?
• What Crimes Carried the Death Penalty?
• Does Jodi Arias Deserve the Death Penalty?
• Why Is the Death Penalty Good?
• Does the Death Penalty Deter Crime?
• Why We Should Ban the Death Penalty?
• How Might the Death Penalty Prevent Crime?
• Why the Death Penalty Should Be Abolished?
• How Objective and Justifiable Are Our Reasons for Enforcing the Death Penalty?
• Is the Death Penalty Ethical?
• What Are Three Arguments for the Death Penalty?
• What Is a Pro Argument for Death Penalty?
• Should the Death Death Penalty Be Legal?
• What Are the Pros and Cons of the  Death Penalty?
• Should the Death Penalty Apply to Juvenile Criminals?
• What Is the Strongest Argument in Favor of the Death Penalty?
• Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished Across the Nations?
• Why Is the Death Penalty Good for Society?
• What Effects Does the Death Penalty Cause to Society?
• What Role Does Race Play in the Death Penalty?
• Who Is Most Affected by the Death Penalty?
• Why Does the United States Government Need the Death Penalty?
• Who Has Power Over the Death Penalty?
• Why Some People Think That the Death Penalty Is Unfair and Unacceptable?
• Why Did the Death Penalty Become a Thing?
• Who Was the First Person to Get the Death Penalty?
• Why the Death Penalty Is Appropriate for Cases Where Defendants Have Mental Retardation?
• When Did Death Penalty End?
• When Was the Death Penalty Most Popular?
• How does the use of the death penalty vary in different countries?
• What factors affect public support for capital punishment?
• How does the death penalty affect crime rates?
• How does capital punishment affect marginalized communities?
• What racial and gender disparities exist in death sentencing?
• How does international law address the death penalty?
• What is the role of mental disability in death penalty cases?
• What are the financial costs of maintaining capital punishment?
• How does the media portrayal of the death penalty affect public attitudes?
• Are there more effective alternatives to the death penalty?
• The emotional toll of the death penalty on families.
• The human rights aspect of capital punishment.
• Views on capital punishment expressed in art.
• How can we make the criminal justice system more compassionate?
• Factors affecting the death penalty verdicts.
• The psychological impact of capital punishment on offenders and executioners.
• Religious perspectives on the death penalty.
• The cultural significance of historical executions.
• Personal stories of inmates sentenced to death.
• Does the death penalty perpetuate violence?
• The consequences of wrongful convictions in capital punishment.
• The death penalty vs. life imprisonment.
• Capital punishment and the possibility of redemption.
• Media’s influence on policies related to capital punishment.
• Is it ethical to execute juvenile offenders?
• The significance of DNA evidence in death penalty cases.
• The role of vengeance in capital punishment.
• Controversies surrounding lethal injections.
• The issue of human dignity in capital punishment.
• Federal vs. state jurisdictions concerning the death penalty.

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These essay examples and topics on Death Penalty were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if you’re using them to write your assignment.

This essay topic collection was updated on June 21, 2024 .

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Expert Commentary

Capital punishment and death row inmates: A research roundup

Our newest research roundup examines capital punishment from multiple angles, including prisoner experiences, factors that affect sentencing and how effectively the death penalty deters crime.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Denise-Marie Ordway, The Journalist's Resource May 6, 2019

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/criminal-justice/capital-punishment-death-row-research/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

Legislators in several states have filed bills aimed at abolishing capital punishment in recent months, as the number of men and women facing death sentences continues to drop nationally and conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices have expressed frustration over delays in carrying out executions .

Meanwhile, several prisoners are scheduled to die this month, including Donnie Edward Johnson , on death row in Tennessee for suffocating his wife in 1984, and serial killer Robert “Bobby” Joe Long , who murdered at least eight women in Florida in the early 1980s.

While more than half of U.S. states and the federal government allow capital punishment, most executions between 1976 and 2017 occurred in five states — Florida, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Men receive the overwhelming majority of death sentences. But more than a dozen women have been executed since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a moratorium on capital punishment.

While most death row prisoners die by lethal injection, many states allow other methods such as electrocution, hanging and firing squad. All executions in 2017, the most recent year for which the federal government provides data, were by lethal injection. A 2018 report from the U.S. Department of Justice offers a broad overview of the nation’s various capital punishment policies as well as a state-by-state tally of death row inmates and executions.

States that authorize capital punishment often post online rosters of their death row inmates. The roster for the Florida Department of Corrections, for example, shows there were 342 people on death row there as of early May 2019. In Idaho, there were eight .

Below, we’ve summarized 14 academic studies about capital punishment to help journalists ground their coverage and better understand the issue. This sampling of peer-reviewed research looks at capital punishment from multiple angles, including inmate experiences on death row, factors that affect sentencing and shifts in public opinion about the death penalty. We’ve also included several studies on prisoners’ last words.

———-

Impact of the news media

Disentangling Victim Gender and Capital Punishment: The Role of Media Phillips, Scott; Haas, Laura Potter; Coverdill, James E. Feminist Criminology , 2012.

This study of capital punishment cases in Texas suggests that the Houston Chronicle ’s news coverage of murder cases influenced prosecutors’ decisions about whether or not to seek the death penalty.

The researchers analyzed the criminal cases of 504 defendants indicted for capital murder in Harris County, Texas between 1992 and 1999. They discovered that 139 of the victims were female, 31 of whom were subject to “sexual degradation,” meaning they were either raped or raped and also “disrobed.” They also examined the newspaper’s coverage of these cases.

The researchers find that “sexual degradation shapes media coverage.” Cases that did not involve sexual degradation prompted 2.8 news articles each, on average, prior to the defendant’s indictment. If a victim was raped but not disrobed, the case generated an average of 4.4 articles. If the victim was raped and disrobed, the newspaper published an average of 14.7 articles about each case.

The analysis, according to the authors, shows that the district attorney “sought death in 9 of the 19 sexual degradation cases that generated 0 to 3 newspaper articles, compared to 11 of the 12 sexual degradation cases that generated 4 or more newspaper articles. Thus, sexual degradation alone — in the absence of intense media coverage — does not necessarily move the DA [district attorney] to seek death. But sexual degradation cases that catch the eye of the media also catch the eye of the DA. The data strongly suggest that the DA is aware of, and responsive to, media coverage of pending capital murder cases.”

Factors affecting sentencing

How Defendants’ Legal Status and Ethnicity and Participants’ Political Orientation Relate to Death Penalty Sentencing Decisions Alvarez, Mauricio J.; Miller, Monica K. Translational Issues in Psychological Science , 2017.

For this study, researchers sought to determine whether U.S. adults would punish a criminal defendant differently based on characteristics such as the defendant’s race, ethnicity and immigration status. The researchers recruited 300 U.S. citizens to read a 2,500-word summary of a mock murder trial and then asked them to decide whether to sentence the mock defendant, already found guilty of murder, to death or life in prison. Each participant also answered questions aimed at measuring their political orientation and other factors that might influence their decision-making, including their level of anti-immigrant bias.

Overall, survey participants gave harsher sentences to immigrant defendants than they did to defendants described as being born in the U.S. But sentencing decisions were influenced by participants’ political orientation. “More liberal and middle of the road participants viewed documented immigrant defendants as more deserving of the death penalty, compared to U.S. born defendants,” the authors write. On the other hand, more conservative participants “viewed documented immigrant defendants as being similarly deserving of the death penalty compared to U.S. born defendants.”

The researchers note that when they compared documented immigrant mock defendants with those who were naturalized citizens, “more liberal participants viewed documented immigrant defendants as more deserving of the death penalty than naturalized citizen defendants, while middle of the road and more conservative participants viewed both defendants as being similarly deserving of the death penalty.”

Possibility of Death Sentence Has Divergent Effect on Verdicts for Black and White Defendants Glaser, Jack; Martin, Karin D.; Kahn, Kimberly B. Law and Human Behavior , 2015.

Researchers conducted a national, web-based survey of a random sample of 276 U.S. adults to determine whether respondents would choose harsher sentences for black or white defendants on trial for murder. Respondents were asked to read a 1,185-word, four-page trial summary outlining the facts of a mock murder case, which was based on transcripts from actual murder trials in California. Survey participants — half were women and the vast majority were white — had to choose to convict or acquit the defendant.

Participants were given a version of the trial summary, which differed in two ways. In some versions, the defendant faced a death sentence while in others, he faced life in prison without the possibility of parole. Defendants were given “first names stereotypically associated with Blacks (Darnel, Lamar, Terrell) or Whites (Andrew, Frank, Peter).”

The main takeaways: Participants chose to convict nearly 73.9% of defendants whose names were associated with black men and 60.9% of defendants with names associated with white men. When study participants read the version of the case featuring a defendant facing a death sentence, they chose to convict 80% of defendants with black-sounding names and 56.5% of defendants with white-sounding names.

The authors write that their findings “indicate that, not only are potential jurors influenced by punishment severity, but defendant race alters how they are swayed — with deleterious outcomes for Black defendants. The demonstration that sentence severity, specifically, the possibility of a death sentence, has a qualitatively different effect on verdicts for ostensibly Black and White defendants is novel.”

Predictors of Death Sentencing for Minority, Equal, and Majority Female Juries in Capital Murder Trials Richards, Tara N.; et al. Women & Criminal Justice , 2016.

This study looks at the link between jury decisions in capital offense cases and the sex composition of juries in North Carolina between 1977 and 2009. It finds that juries with an equal number of male and female members “were associated with a 65% increase in the odds of recommending the death penalty.” When juries had seven or more female members, the odds of recommending a death sentence fell by 32%. The researchers did not find a statistically significant relationship between male-majority juries and sentencing decisions.

No Sympathy for the Devil: Attributing Psychopathic Traits to Capital Murderers Also Predicts Support for Executing Them Edens, John F.; et al. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment , 2013.

The personality traits that defendants exhibit during capital murder trials influence whether or not laypeople think they deserve the death penalty, this study suggests. “A defendant’s perceived lack of remorse in particular was influential, although perceptions of grandiose self-worth and a manipulative interpersonal style also contributed incrementally to support for a death sentence,” the authors write.

Researchers examined data from three studies — two published and one unpublished — to determine whether defendants’ personality traits affect attitudes about capital punishment. In all three studies, students recruited from a university in the southern U.S. were asked to choose a criminal sentence for a mock defendant after reading a summary of a mock murder trial. The higher the students rated the defendant on a “global psychopathy” scale, the more likely they were to choose a death sentence.

The researchers write that the results “inform how perceptions of socially undesirable personality traits relate to attitudes about the sanctioning of criminals, particularly murderers facing a possible death sentence. Our findings converge with other research … suggesting that perceived lack of remorse carries considerable weight in terms of influencing legal decision-makers.”

Public support for capital punishment

Racial-Ethnic Intolerance and Support for Capital Punishment: A Cross-National Comparison Unnever, James D.; Cullen, Francis T. Criminology , 2010.

This study finds that citizens of several European countries, including France, Great Britain and Spain, were more likely to support capital punishment if they were intolerant of racial and ethnic minorities.

The researchers analyzed a variety of surveys conducted in European nations between 1992 and 2006.

The main takeaway: “In France, Belgium, the Netherlands, East and West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg,  Denmark, Great Britain, Greece, Spain, Finland, Sweden, Austria, and Canada, individuals  who were racially and ethnically intolerant — expressing animus toward immigrants — were significantly  and substantively more likely to support the death penalty. In two countries, Portugal and Ireland, racial-ethnic intolerance did not positively predict support for either the death penalty or more general punitive attitudes,” the authors write.

The researchers also find that European youth with anti-immigrant attitudes were more likely to support capital punishment.

To Execute or Not to Execute? Examining Public Support for Capital Punishment of Sex Offenders Mancini, Christina; Mears, Daniel P. Journal of Criminal Just ice, 2010.

In this study, researchers examine whether the public agreed with a move by states in the 1990s to extend the death penalty to convicted sex offenders.

The researchers find, based on an analysis of a 1991 national telephone poll of 1,101 people, that the public’s views on punishing sex crimes with the death penalty depended on whether the victim was an adult or child. According to the opinion poll, conducted by the Minneapolis Star Tribune , 27% of Americans supported capital punishment for offenders who raped an adult while 51% favored it for offenders who sexually abused a child.

The researchers also find that people who believe sex offenders are prone to recidivism and that the criminal justice system does not do enough to address sex crime were more likely to support the death penalty for sex offenders.

“Vicarious experiences with sexual victimization — that is, knowing someone who was victimized — was associated with decreased support for executing such offenders,” the authors write.

As a crime deterrent

What Do Panel Studies Tell Us About a Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment? A Critique of the Literature Chalfin, Aaron; Haviland, Amelia M.; Raphael, Steven. Journal of Quantitative Criminology , 2013.

Researchers analyzed multiple published studies to try to gauge how effectively capital punishment deters homicide. What they learned: the academic literature is inconclusive.

“First, we believe that the empirical research in these papers is under-theorized and difficult to interpret,” the authors write. “Second, many of the papers purporting to find strong effects of the death penalty on state-level murder rates suffer from basic methodological problems.”

The authors also note the difficulty of studying the effects of the death penalty, considering states generally execute only a few people per year.

Assumptions Matter: Model Uncertainty and the Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment Durlauf, Steven N.: Fu, Chao; Navarro, Salvador. American Economic Review , 2012.

In this article, researchers look at some of the reasons why it’s still unclear whether capital punishment policies deter homicide. They examine how previous researchers’ assumptions about homicide influenced estimates for the number of lives saved when a convicted murderer is executed.

The authors’ explanation is technical and focuses on statistical modeling. “Depending on the model, one can claim that an additional criminal executed induces 63 additional murders or that it saves 21 lives,” the authors write. “This demonstrates the ease with which a researcher can, through choice of modeling assumptions, produce evidence that each execution either costs many lives or saves many lives.”

Inmate experiences on death row

Suicide on Death Row Tartaro, Christine; Lester, David. Journal of Forensic Sciences , 2016.

While death row inmates in the U.S. are supposed to be closely supervised, they are more likely to commit suicide than male prisoners who aren’t serving death sentences. They also are more likely to commit suicide than males over age 15 who are not incarcerated, according to this study.

From 1977 to 2010, there were an average of 2.74 suicides a year on death row. The average suicide rate was 129.70 deaths per 100,000 death row inmates. For state prison inmates not facing execution, the suicide rate was 17.41 deaths per 100,000 inmates, on average. And for males over age 15, it was 24.62 deaths per 100,000 people.

The researchers note that suicide rates for death row inmates and males in the general prison population have fallen gradually since the late 1970s. They also note that the suicide rate among death row inmates is lower during years when a greater number of death row inmates are executed.

Wasted Resources and Gratuitous Suffering: The Failure of a Security Rationale for Death Row Cunningham, Mark D.; Reidy, Thomas J.; Sorensen, Jon R. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law , 2016.

This study focuses on the behavior of death row inmates who were “mainstreamed” into the general prison population at a high-security prison in Missouri between 1991 and 2015. Elsewhere in the U.S., prisoners with death sentences tend to be segregated from other prisoners and placed in “supermaximum confinement” at a high cost to taxpayers.

The key takeaways: Over the 25-year period, not only were death row inmates as likely as or less likely than other prisoners to be involved in “assaultive misconduct,” but rates of violence among death row inmates were lower after they were mainstreamed than they had been when prisoners were segregated on death row.

“Because the CP [Capital Punishment] inmate has a limited life expectancy, he is arguably particularly motivated to make those remaining days as positive for himself as possible,” the authors write. “Rather than having ‘nothing to lose,’ the CP inmate may pragmatically recognize he has more at stake in each day and thus more to gain or lose by his conduct.”

A Review on Time Perception of Death Row Inmates’ Denials in Their Last Statements in the Context of Forensic Linguistics: The Sample of Texas Huntsville Unit Uysal, Basak. Journal of Death and Dying , 2018.

This study examines the last statements of 537 death row inmates executed in Texas between 1982 and 2016. A key takeaway: Seventy inmates used their final words to deny they committed the crimes with which they’d been convicted while 108 chose not to say or write anything at all. “The main topics reflected by the denier offenders are defense, love, wishing, and sadness, and the topics reflected less are atonement, forgiveness, and ending,” the author writes.

Those who gave last statements used 102 words, on average. Inmates who denied their crimes used an average of 138 words. The shortest statement is one sentence while the longest comprises 134 sentences. The most educated inmates “talk less and use fewer words.”

The Functional Use of Religion When Faced with Imminent Death: An Analysis of Death Row Inmates’ Last Statements Smith, Ryan A. The Sociological Quarterly , 2018.

This analysis of death row inmates’ final statements focuses on the use of religious words and phrases. This researcher also examined the last words of the 537 death row inmates sentenced to die in Texas between 1982 and 2016. Of the 429 inmates who gave oral last statements, more than 6 out of 10 expressed themselves using religious sentiments, which “challenge the stereotyped image of the hardened, unrepentant death row inmate,” the author writes.

The author states that the study “deepens our understanding of the manner in which death row inmates use religion to cope with imminent death.” But he also points out that some people may question the authenticity of their final words, which are “solicited under artificial circumstances because statements are made moments before execution when the inmate is strapped to a gurney in front of witnesses.”

Of note: Inmates’ final statements became more religious after 1996, when Texas began allowing victims’ families and close friends to witness executions and hear last statements.

Forgiveness, Spirituality and Love: Thematic Analysis of Last Statements from Death Row, Texas (2002–17) Foley, S.R.; Kelly, B.D. QJM: An International Journal of Medicine , 2018.

For this study, researchers examined the final statements of the 70 inmates executed in Texas between 2011 and 2017, 61 of whom gave oral last statements. All Hispanic inmates made last statements, compared with 92% of black inmates and 70.8% of white inmates. On average, prisoners had less than 10 years of education and their median age was 40.5 years.

The most common theme in statements was love followed by spirituality, the researchers find. Third most common was an apology to the victim’s family, which was included in 30% of statements. Meanwhile, 16% of prisoners apologized to their own families, 11% asked for forgiveness and 10% denied committing the offense for which they were executed. Nobody quoted poetry or literature, the researchers note.

Less than half as many inmates asked for forgiveness in their final statements as had done so in earlier years. Between 2002 and 2006, according to the study, 32% of prisoners asked for forgiveness before their execution. Between 2006 and 2011, 25% did.

Looking for more research on prison inmates? Check out our collection of government reports and academic papers that help paint a picture of the men, women and children who are in custody nationwide. We’ve also summarized research that looks at private prisons , which inmates get the most visitors and whether more educated adults receive shorter prison sentences .

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Deterrence and the Death Penalty (2012)

Chapter: front matter.

DETERRENCE AND THE DEATH PENALTY

Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty Daniel S. Nagin and John V. Pepper, Editors Committee on Law and Justice Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL              OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS Washington, D.C. www.nap.edu

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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.

This study was supported by Grant Number 2010-IJ-CX-0018 from the National Institute of Justice, Grant Number TRF09-01115 from the Tides Foundation, and the Proteus Action League (grant not numbered). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the project.

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-25416-8 International Standard Book Number-10: 0-309-25416-7

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Printed in the United States of America

Suggested citation: National Research Council. (2012). Deterrence and the Death Penalty. Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty, Daniel S. Nagin and John V. Pepper, Eds. Committee on Law and Justice, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES

Advisers to the Nation on Science, Engineering, and Medicine

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone is president of the National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Charles M. Vest is president of the National Academy of Engineering.

The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg is president of the Institute of Medicine.

The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy’s purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone and Dr. Charles M. Vest are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the National Research Council.

www.national-academies.org

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COMMITTEE ON DETERRENCE AND THE DEATH PENALTY

DANIEL S. NAGIN ( Chair ), H. John Heinz III College, Carnegie Mellon University

KERWIN K. CHARLES, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago

PHILIP J. COOK, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University

STEVEN N. DURLAUF, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin–Madison

AMELIA M. HAVILAND, H. John Heinz III College, Carnegie Mellon University

GERARD E. LYNCH, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

CHARLES F. MANSKI, Department of Economics, Northwestern University

JAMES Q. WILSON, School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University, and Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy, Boston College

JANE L. ROSS, Study Director

JOHN V. PEPPER, Consultant

KEIKO ONO, Senior Program Associate

CAROL HAYES, Christine Mirzayan Fellow

BARBARA BOYD, Administrative Associate

COMMITTEE ON LAW AND JUSTICE 2012

JEREMY TRAVIS ( Chair ), John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

CARL C. BELL, Community Mental Health Council, Inc., Chicago, IL

JOHN J. DONOHUE , III, Stanford Law School, Stanford University

MARK A.R. KLEIMAN, Department of Public Policy, University of California, Los Angeles

GARY LAFREE, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland

JANET L. LAURITSEN, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri-St. Louis

GLENN C. LOURY, Department of Economics, Brown University

TERRIE E. MOFFITT, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University

DANIEL S. NAGIN, H. John Heinz III College, Carnegie Mellon University

RUTH D. PETERSON, Criminal Justice Research Center, Ohio State University

ANNE MORRISON PIEHL, Department of Economics and Program in Criminal Justice, Rutgers University

DANIEL B. PRIETO, Public Sector Strategy & Innovation, IBM Global Business Services, Washington, DC

ROBERT J. SAMPSON, Department of Sociology, Harvard University

DAVID WEISBURD, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University

CATHY SPATZ WIDOM, Psychology Department, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

PAUL K. WORMELI, Integrated Justice Information Systems, Ashburn, VA

JANE L. ROSS, Director

IN MEMORIAM James Q. Wilson 1931-2012

“I’ve tried to follow the facts wherever they land.”

This report is dedicated to James Q. Wilson for his long service to the National Research Council, his influential career of scholarship and public service, and his unblinking commitment to the principle that science requires us to interpret the evidence as it is, not as we want it to be.

M ore than three decades ago, in Deterrence and Incapacitation: Estimating the Effects of Criminal Sanctions on Crime Rates, the National Research Council (NRC) (1978, p. 9) concluded that “available studies provide no useful evidence on the deterrent effect of capital punishment.” That report was issued 2 years after the Supreme Court decision in Gregg v. Georgia ended a 4-year moratorium on execution in the United States. In the 35 years since the publication of that report, especially in recent years, a considerable number of post- Gregg studies have attempted to estimate the effect of the legal status or the actual implementation of the death penalty on homicide rates. Those studies have reached widely varying conclusions.

Against this background, the NRC formed the Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty to address whether the available evidence provides a reasonable basis for drawing conclusions about the magnitude of the effect of capital punishment on homicide rates. At a workshop on April 28-29, 2011, workshop papers commissioned by the committee (which will be published in a special issue of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology ) were presented and discussed by their authors: Robert J. Apel, University at Albany, State University of New York; Aaron Chalfin, University of California, Berkeley; Chao Fu, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Justin McCrary, University of California, Berkeley; Salvador Navarro, University of Western Ontario, Ontario, Canada; John V. Pepper, University of Virginia; and Steven Raphael, University of California, Berkeley. The workshop also included comments on the presentations by Jeffrey Grogger, University of Chicago; Guido Imbens, Harvard University; Kenneth C. Land, Duke

University; Christopher Sims, Princeton University; and Justin Wolfers, University of Pennsylvania.

The committee appreciates the contributions of these presenters and those who commented on them to the development of its report. In addition, John V. Pepper provided invaluable assistance to the committee throughout its deliberations. The work of staff members from the Committee on Law and Justice of the NRC facilitated the committee’s work in many ways. Thanks are due to Jane L. Ross, study director; Keiko Ono, senior program associate; Carol Hayes, Christine Mirzayan fellow; and Barbara Boyd, administrative coordinator.

Many individuals at the NRC assisted the committee. We thank Kirsten Sampson-Snyder, who shepherded the report through the NRC review process, Eugenia Grohman, who edited the draft report, and Yvonne Wise, for processing the report through final production.

This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the NRC’s Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We thank the following individuals for their review of this report: John Donohue, III, Stanford Law School, Stanford University; Andrew Gelman, Department of Statistics and Department of Political Science, Columbia University; Kenneth C. Land, Department of Sociology, Duke University; Candice Odgers, School of Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine; Ricardo Reis, Department of Economics, Columbia University; Greg Ridgeway, RAND Safety and Justice Program, RAND Center on Quality Policing, RAND Corporation; Robert J. Sampson, Department of Sociology, Harvard University; Dick Thornburgh, Counsel, K&L Gates, LLP, and former Attorney General of the United States; Petra E. Todd, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania; and Michael Tonry, School of Law, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by Gary LaFree, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, University of Maryland, and John T. Monahan, University of Virginia Law School. Appointed by the NRC, they were responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully con-

sidered. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.

This report is dedicated to James Q. Wilson. Jim was a valued member of this and many other NRC committees on which he served over his long and influential career. Jim’s contributions to scholarship and public service will stand as enduring testimony to the power of his intellect. He was a quiet but forceful proponent for balanced and clear-minded assessment of the evidence. I first met Jim in my role as a staff member of the 1978 NRC committee that resulted in report Deterrence and Incapacitation: Estimating the Effect of Criminal Sanctions on Crime Rates . I was deeply impressed by the clarity of his thought and gift for communication. He served as a role model for me ever since. I was thus especially honored that he agreed to serve on this committee, which was greatly aided by his constructive participation throughout our deliberations.

Daniel S. Nagin, Chair Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty

Shortcomings in Existing Research

Specification of the Sanction Regime for Homicide

Potential Murderers’ Perceptions of and Responses to Capital Punishment

Strong and Unverifiable Assumptions

Next Steps for Research

1  INTRODUCTION

The Current Debate

Committee Charge and Scope of Work

2  CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN THE POST- GREGG ERA

Executions and Death Sentences Over Time

Use of the Death Penalty

3  DETERMINING THE DETERRENT EFFECT OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: KEY ISSUES

Concepts of Deterrence

Sanction Regimes

Data Issues

Variations in Murder Rates

Reciprocal Effects Between Homicide Rates and Sanction Regimes

4  PANEL STUDIES

Panel Studies Reviewed

Methods Used: Overview

The Studies, Their Characteristics, and the Effects Found

Specifying the Expected Cost of Committing a Capital Homicide: f(Z it )

Model Assumptions

Benefits of Random Assignment

Fixed Effect Regression Model

Instrumental Variables

Homogeneity

5   TIME-SERIES STUDIES

Basic Conceptual Issues

Execution Event Studies

Studies of Deviations from Fitted Trends

Vector Autoregressions

Evidence Under Existing Criminal Sanction Regimes

Granger Causality and Causality as Treatment Response

Choice of Variables in VAR Studies

Inferences Under Alternative Sanction Regimes

Event Studies

Time-Series Regressions

Cross-Polity Comparisons

Conclusions

6  CHALLENGES TO IDENTIFYING DETERRENT EFFECTS

Data on Sanction Regimes

Perceptions of Sanction Risks

Measurement of Perceptions

Inference on Perceptions from Homicide Rates Following Executions

Identifying Effects: Feedbacks and Unobserved Confounders

Feedback Effects

Omitted Variables

The Equilibrium Effect

Addressing Model Uncertainty with Weaker Assumptions

Model Averaging

Partial Identification

Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff

Many studies during the past few decades have sought to determine whether the death penalty has any deterrent effect on homicide rates. Researchers have reached widely varying, even contradictory, conclusions. Some studies have concluded that the threat of capital punishment deters murders, saving large numbers of lives; other studies have concluded that executions actually increase homicides; still others, that executions have no effect on murder rates. Commentary among researchers, advocates, and policymakers on the scientific validity of the findings has sometimes been acrimonious.

Against this backdrop, the National Research Council report Deterrence and the Death Penalty assesses whether the available evidence provides a scientific basis for answering questions of if and how the death penalty affects homicide rates. This new report from the Committee on Law and Justice concludes that research to date on the effect of capital punishment on homicide rates is not useful in determining whether the death penalty increases, decreases, or has no effect on these rates. The key question is whether capital punishment is less or more effective as a deterrent than alternative punishments, such as a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Yet none of the research that has been done accounted for the possible effect of noncapital punishments on homicide rates. The report recommends new avenues of research that may provide broader insight into any deterrent effects from both capital and noncapital punishments.

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95 Death Penalty Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best death penalty topic ideas & essay examples, ✅ simple & easy death penalty essay titles, ❓ questions about the death penalty.

• Death Penalty: Utilitarian View on Capital Punishment Another significant benefit offered by the death penalty to the society is that it leads to the permanent incapacitation of the convicted person.
• Death Penalty and Ethics The arguments for the capital punishment as explained earlier are also extremely weak and the practice of death penalty is morally wrong.
• The Death Penalty: Can It Ever Be Justified? Nevertheless, such a claim is questionable because it is the same constitution that has a bill of rights indicating that it is the right of every citizen to be protected and to live.
• The History of Death Penalty The death penalty became legal in America in 1776 during the revolutionary war. The US Supreme court ruled the death penalty as unconstitutional in 1972.
• Death Penalty: Why the Death Penalty Should be Abolished The gist of Nicole Smith’s argument is that the death penalty or capital punishment is necessary because it deters murder, thereby saving the victims’ families and friends the pain of losing loved ones.
• The Death Penalty, a Just Punishment The principles of the criminals should be used against them, consequently, the death penalty is the best way to give humanity to realize the horror of death and the fear of being killed.
• Sould the Death Penalty Be Abolished? This sentence assumes that there are sufficient reasons to kill a criminal and that there is no possibility that the case can be readdressed.
• Atkinson’s Death Penalty Article: Rebuttal Argument Regardless of unrealistic and irrelevant assertions about therapeutic jurisprudence, the death sentence is an efficient deterrence and punishment mechanism when seen within the context of vigilante justice and as a part of the current legal […]
• Restorative Justice and the Death Penalty Draft thesis: The death penalty, when viewed under the retributive justice framework and as a part of the existing justice system, is an effective deterrent and punishment measure irrespective of impractical and irrelevant restorative justice […]
• Capital Punishment and the Death Penalty Furthermore, the defense and, in the United States, the prosecution has the right of vexatious challenge, which allows it to confront several participants without providing a reason.
• Death Penalty: Arguments For and Against The area of the current research concerns the death penalty and whether it might be abolished in the future. Another reason to cancel the death penalty is the unnecessary brutality of the process.
• The Legality and the Processes of the Death Penalty This is because it not only works to punish the crime but also perfectly buries the possibility of that person causing a similar harm in the future.
• Racial Disparity in the Application of the Death Penalty The race of the offender and the race of the victim have been observed to be subjective in the delivery of the death penalty.
• Death Penalty: Juveniles and Mental Disabilities Consequently, the Eight Amendment should dismiss the death penalty for this category and state laws must implement recommendations of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the American Psychological Association, and the American Bar Association that […]
• Reasons to Abolish the Death Penalty It is also the obvious reason why the United Nations urges the countries of the world to limit the use of the death penalty to the bare minimum and only employ it for the most […]
• Is the Death Penalty Discriminatory? This paper identifies the paucity of research on the death penalty and preliminarily investigates the discriminatory course of justice when the death penalty is applied in any jurisdiction.
• Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished in China? The aim of this research paper is to advocate for the eradication of the death penalty in the People’s Republic of China, based on both human rights as well as practical deterrence grounds.
• Crimes Against the State: Terrorist Attacks and Death Penalty This essay is a critical analysis of the controversial provisions of the Anti-Terrorism and Death Penalty Act of 1996. The first controversial provision of the Anti-Terrorism and Death Penalty Act is title I and its […]
• The Death Penalty: Importance and Benefit Many of the people who are not in favor of such an act believe that hanging a person till death is not the only solution, so I say question them “what could be the other […]
• Capital Punishment Debates: Death Penalty The capital punishment has been practiced in almost all the societies and all epochs in the development of the mankind. The author educates the society as a whole on litigious issues of the death penalty […]
• Sangmin Bae on the Death Penalty While majority of the countries have abolished the death penalty, America continues to remain a prominent protagonist for the death penalty.
• Death Penalty: Critical Thinking and Arguments The execution sermons of the early colonies were full of warnings against following in the footsteps of the condemned, and executions were public events designed to instill fear and reverence for the law in the […]
• Death Penalty for Murder by Terrorism The case of Timothy is the first instance of the death sentence against a terrorist in the United States. The law enforcement agencies try their best to get rid of the terrorists and their activities […]
• Death Penalty: Mistrial, Racial Bias, Crime Ranking Given the gravity of the outcome, i.e, the death of the person that was possibly innocent or guilty to a lesser degree than stated in the course of the trial, the concept of capital punishment […]
• Death Penalty: Alternatives and Abolition In addition, the NC network is of the opinion that the death penalty system lacks the much-needed efficiency in the criminal justice system.
• Death Penalty – Criminal Law Costs of the death penalty show that instead of the death penalty leading to a decrease in the cost of administering justice, it has led to an increase in the cost incurred when compared with […]
• Death Penalty Role in the Criminal Justice System The question posed by Cynthia Tucker in the article is whether the criminals in America deserve the death penalty or not. Many people believe that the death penalty is the best punishment for people perceived […]
• Is the Death Penalty Effective? For a while now, Saudi Arabia has remained one of the global nations that strongly believe that punishing by death is one of the ways of giving justice to victims of crime and one of […]
• The Suitability of the Death Penalty This is an effective way of punishing capital offenders and deterring other criminals from committing similar crimes due to the following reasons.
• Death Penalty: Ryan Mathews Case It is the innocence of some of the convicts in the death row that has created a crisis in the system.
• Death Penalty Ethics: Opposed Positions Death penalty is a crime in many reasons, the most strong of them are as follows: the death penalty is to be prohibited as a person suffers emotionally because he/she knows time, place and the […]
• Ethics of Death Penalty One of the strongest arguments that support the death penalty is that it satisfies the need for retribution. The death penalty is a violation of the most basic right the right to life.
• The Death Penalty in the US Criminal Justice System Due to this, the Supreme Court overturned the decision of an Oklahoma court by explaining that the execution of the minor violated the eighth amendment statute.
• Death Penalty and Discrimination Since the dawn of civilization, it has actually come to the realization of many that, the just capital punishment of criminals is injustice in entirety.
• Death Penalty Debate All Over the World However, it is again important to note that the essay on history of The American death penalty has not addressed some issues that are addressed by the essay on the sow death.
• The Death Penalty Debate in the United States of America The punishment is believed to have been there even at the time of the earlier colonies of the United States; it as well continued to be in force within the states that came to form […]
• Arguments in Favor and Against the Death Penalty It should be noted that opposing the death penalty does not mean that people are oblivious of the magnitude of the crimes committed by this criminals.
• Death Penalty: Every For and Against By passing the death penalty, the judge ensures that retribution is served to the victim of the murder. A claim made by opponents of the death penalty is that this is a barbaric form of […]
• The Application of the Principle of Utilitarianism in Explaining the Death Penalty However, the theory supports a form of punishment when the level of suffering is so high that it is beneficial to society.
• Death Penalty: James a Inciardi Perspective The author thinks that the death penalty does not play a role in the rehabilitation of offenders. The proponents of the abolition of the punishment have also used their knowledge of the fact that states […]
• The Death Penalty: Can It Ever Be Justified? What it means is that, contrary to the assumption that by executing this kind of criminals, the state simply strives to appease the victims’ relatives, the actual aim of the application of the death penalty, […]
• The US Should Abolish Death Penalty In fact, death penalty is an old way of dealing with crime, which the US has borrowed despite the presence of the knowledge that death penalty is an archaic and barbaric technique.
• The Death Penalty in the Modern Society The cost of maintenance of the convicted individuals is also one of the reasons that necessitate the death penalty. The reaffirmation of the death penalty is also attributed to the teachings portrayed by most religions.
• Death Penalty Issues in Tennessee State This argument tends to disregard the death penalty for the benefit of the TN state. This thwarts the need to execute them in the context of death penalty.
• Green Mile as a Statement Against the Death Penalty The movie is a story of John Coffey, African-American who is accused of the murder of two girls and has to be punished by the death penalty.
• Argument for Death Penalty as a Fair Punishment This practice gains insight from both biblical phases of the Old Testament and the Islamic Quran, which embraced the use of the death penalty in ensuring dispensation of justice.
• Fundamental Right to Live: Abolish the Death Penalty Whatever side of the debate we explore, it is plain that the death penalty is a denial of the basic human rights as it contravenes the right to life as stated in the Universal Declaration […]
• Death Penalty for Young People This raised the question as to whether death penalty was the suitable punishment for such criminals or whether they actually reduce crime.
• Death Penalty From the Point of Religion Secondly, the impacts of the death penalty are too severe on the lives of the victims’ families and close kinsmen and on the settlement of the case.
• The Practice of Death Penalty Ulcepo noted in his article that though capital punishment continues to be practiced today in several countries like the USA, my feeling is that pleas calling for the abolishment of the death penalty should be […]
• Facets of the Death Penalty The proponents of the death penalty are of the view that several gains are bound to be achieved at the institution of this penalty.
• Debates on Death Penalty in the United States The first documented death penalty was of George Kendall who was a captain and was executed by a firing squad in the first decade of the 17th century.
• Annotation Of: Hispanics and the Death Penalty It also identified several manifestations of racial discrimination between the whites and non whites by comparing Asian Americans and Hispanics marriages with the whites and discovered that the Asian Americans and Hispanics had higher chances […]
• Acceptance of Death Penalty in the United States The efficiency of the penalty ought to depend much on the type of the felony committed as well as the psychological state of those who commit it.
• Which Countries Still Have Death Penalty?
• How Did the Death Penalty Start?
• How the Death Penalty Changed Over Time?
• What States Still Have the Death Penalty in 2022?
• Why Should the Death Penalty Be Re-Introduced To Australia?
• How Is the Death Penalty Against Our Human Rights?
• Why Should the Death Penalty Be Available for Juvenile Offenders?
• Who Got the Death Penalty but Was Innocent?
• What Is the Legal Process of the Death Penalty?
• Why Do Some People think That Death Penalty Is Unfair and Unacceptable?
• Who Was the First Person to Receive the Death Penalty?
• How Can Death Penalty Prevent Repeat Offenders?
• How Might the Death Penalty Prevent Crime?
• What Role Does Race Play in the Death Penalty?
• Who Was the Youngest Person to Get the Death Penalty?
• Do People on Death Row Get To See Their Family?
• How Many Death Penalties a Year?
• What Crimes Are Charged With Death Penalty?
• What Effects the Death Penalty Causes on Society?
• What Countries Allow Death Penalty for Children?
• How Objective and Justifiable Are Our Reasons for Enforcing the Death Penalty?
• Is the Death Penalty Revenge or Punishment?
• Is the Electric Chair Still Used 2021?
• Why Is the Death Penalty Appropriate for Cases Where Defendants Have Mental Retardation?
• Can a Woman Get the Death Penalty?
• Why Must Death Penalty Be Abolished?
• What Is the Psychological Impact of the Death Penalty?
• How Does the Death Penalty Affect the Family?
• Why Was the Death Penalty Made Constitutional?
• How Many Females Have Gotten the Death Penalty?
• Capital Punishment Topics
• Humanism Research Ideas
• Afterlife Research Topics
• Deontology Questions
• Fifth Amendment Essay Ideas
• Sixth Amendment Topics
• Social Security Paper Topics
• History Topics
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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• Newspaper Research Guide This guide describes sources for current and historical newspapers available in print, electronically, and on microfilm through the UW-Madison Libraries. These sources are categorized by pages: Current, Historical, Local/Madison, Wisconsin, US, Alternative/Ethnic, and International.

Organizations

• ACLU Death Penalty Campaign The Capital Punishment Project (CPP) challenges the unfairness and arbitrariness of capital punishment while working toward the ultimate goal of abolishing the death penalty.
• Amnesty International (AI) Worldwide movement supporting human rights for all
• National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Devoted to abolishing capital punishment
• Pro-Death Penalty.com Site provides information in support of the death penalty, from Justice for All: a Criminal Justice Reform Organization.

About Capital Punishment/Death Penalty

This guide includes sources dealing with the legal, ethical, and social issues involved in capital punishment/the death penalty.

Try searching these terms using the resources linked on this page: capital punishment, capital punishment AND DNA, capital punishment AND (name of country or state), death penalty, death penalty AND execution*, death row.

Overview Resources - Background Information

• Capital Punishment/The Death Penalty Resource Guide From the National Center for State Courts
• Ethics - Capital punishment Guide to capital punishment from the BBC including both sides of the debate
• Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center (OVRC) provides viewpoint articles, topic overviews, statistics, primary documents, links to websites, and full-text magazine and newspaper articles related to controversial social issues.
• CQ Researcher Contains weekly in-depth reports that cover the most current and controversial issues of the day with complete summaries, insight into all sides of the issues, bibliographies and more.

Articles - Scholarly and Popular

• Academic Search Academic Search Premier is a multidisciplinary database that provides full text for more than 4,600 journals, including approximately 3,900 peer-reviewed titles.
• SocINDEX with Full-Text SocINDEX with Full Text includes full text for 397 "core coverage" sociology journals dating back to 1908 and 150 "priority coverage" journals. It also includes full text for more than 720 books and 6,743 conference papers.
• Criminal Justice Resources: Death Penalty from the University of Michigan

Statistics and Data

• "Incarceration and Capital Punishment" from Information Please See "Characteristics of Prisoners Under Sentence of Death," "Women on Death Row," "Methods of Execution," "Death Row Exonerations"
• Bureau of Justice Statistics Execution statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice.
• Polling Report.com An independent, nonpartisan resource on trends in American public opinion.
• The Federal Death Penalty System: A Statistical Survey From the U.S. Department of Justice
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Finding Sources for Death Penalty Research

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One of the most popular topics for an argument essay is the death penalty . When researching a topic for an argumentative essay , accuracy is important, which means the quality of your sources is important.

If you're writing a paper about the death penalty, you can start with this list of sources, which provide arguments for all sides of the topic.

Amnesty International Site

Amnesty International views the death penalty as "the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights." This website provides a gold mine of statistics and the latest breaking news on the subject.

Mental Illness on Death Row

Death Penalty Focus is an organization that aims to bring about the abolition of capital punishment and is a great resource for information. You will find evidence that many of the people executed over the past decades are affected by a form of mental illness or disability.

Pros and Cons of the Death Penalty

This extensive article provides an overview of arguments for and against the death penalty and offers a history of notable events that have shaped the discourse for activists and proponents.

Pro-Death Penalty Links

This page comes from ProDeathPenalty and contains a state-by-state guide to capital punishment resources. You'll also find a list of papers written by students on topics related to capital punishment. 

• Ethos, Logos, Pathos for Persuasion
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• Unreliable Sources for Your Research Project
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Asking the Right Questions About the Death Penalty

The incoming head of the death penalty information center on the time he was a potential juror in a capital case..

There will be a changing of the guard next week at the Death Penalty Information Center, the non-profit organization dedicated to providing news, analysis, and data about capital punishment in the United States. Richard Dieter, the center’s executive director, is stepping down after 23 years of supervising the production of reports, processing news coverage, and generally being a fount of knowledge for reporters and lawyers asking about the modern death penalty. And on Monday, Robert Dunham — a lawyer, law professor, and expert on capital punishment, a litigator with extensive experience in death penalty cases — will take over as the new executive director.

The job Dunham is about to inherit is frenetic under any circumstances, but it is also a particularly dynamic time in the history of the death penalty in America. There is a roiling fight over lethal injection secrecy laws and over the drugs to be used to kill the condemned. Utah this week pushed ahead with plans to use the firing squad again, and Alabama lawmakers are pondering the renewed use of an electric chair. There is a fight over judicial overrides of jury verdicts in capital cases — a topic the U.S. Supreme Court agreed just this week it needs to address. And in Pennsylvania, where Dunham has worked for decades, Gov. Tom Wolf and Seth Williams, the state’s most visible prosecutor, are fighting in court over a moratorium halting executions.

We reached out to Dunham this week to ask him about the death penalty and DPIC’s role in chronicling it. Below, he discusses the time he was a potential juror in a capital case, his thoughts on Pennsylvania’s flawed capital regime, and addresses the eternal question: Are you for or against the death penalty? — Andrew Cohen

I have been called as a prospective juror in a capital case in Philadelphia and was asked about my views on the death penalty. At that time, I was an associate in the litigation department of a major Philadelphia law firm and was handling a capital case pro bono. I answered under oath that I could impose the death penalty in an appropriate case.

In many states, the questioning of death penalty juries is not as extensive as it is in Colorado or in federal death-penalty cases. And the lawyers in the case in which I was called to serve did not ask any follow-up questions about my views on the death penalty. I was asked additional questions about my answers to whether I knew anyone in law enforcement (I did) and whether I had been a victim of crime (I had). I told the lawyers and the judge that I knew several police officers – including a Philadelphia homicide detective – from my service as a member of the board of directors of a local non-profit that provided support services to victims of crime. I also told them that I had been robbed at knifepoint by two assailants one night on my way home from law school.

I was asked the race of my assailants (they were black) and whether it would affect my ability to judge the guilt or innocence of a young African-American defendant (it would not). I was not asked about any cases I was handling at the firm but was asked a bit about the partners with whom I had worked. But it turns out that none of these answers mattered anyway because of my answers to one particular question: I grew up in West Mt. Airy, one of the most racially integrated neighborhoods in Philadelphia. The prosecution exercised a discretionary challenge – called a peremptory challenge – to strike me from the jury.

Eight or nine years later, after Professor David Baldus’ landmark study on Philadelphia’s death penalty, I learned why. I had been a victim of racial profiling by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office.

The first Baldus Philadelphia study, published in the late 1990s, showed that among all Philadelphia cases in which the prosecution sought the death penalty, the odds that a defendant would be sentenced to death increased by a factor of 3.1 if the defendant was black. Among all cases that resulted in a conviction for capital murder and advanced to a penalty trial, the odds of being sentenced to death were 9.3 times greater if the defendant was black. And among all cases in which the jury had found both aggravating and mitigating factors, and so was required to choose whether the defendant should live or be sentenced to die, the odds that the jury would exercise its discretion to take a defendant’s life were 29.9 times greater if the defendant was black.

Using the same data analysis that is used in determining medical risks, the researchers learned that black defendants in Philadelphia faced an “excess death rate” of 30 percent, meaning that nearly a third of the more than 100 African Americans sentenced to death in Philadelphia would not have been sentenced to death but for their race. Professor Baldus wanted to know why. And while he was working on this first study, an internal Philadelphia district attorney training tape came to light teaching the city prosecutors how to strike jurors on the basis of race and to invent race-neutral reasons for those strikes. So Professor Baldus began collecting data on the race of jurors accepted or struck by the prosecution and the defense in capital cases.

That data, which spanned three prosecutorial administrations between 1981 and 1997 and encompassed more than 14,000 choices to empanel or exclude prospective jurors, showed that Philadelphia prosecutors peremptorily struck black jurors from capital trials at twice the rate of non-black jurors. It also showed that Philadelphia prosecutors peremptorily struck prospective white jurors like me who grew up in integrated neighborhoods at twice the rate of jurors who lived in highly segregated white neighborhoods. In other words, Philadelphia prosecutors used racial profiling to discriminate both against black jurors and against white jurors who were more likely to associate with blacks.

Now, I think it is important to distinguish between the morality of the death penalty in the abstract – as to which DPIC takes no position – and the separate question of the death penalty as public policy. In terms of public policy, the question, “Do you favor or oppose the death penalty?” in the abstract is only the start of the inquiry. Do you favor or oppose the death penalty as compared to what? To a short term of years, to life without parole, to life without parole with prison wages earmarked for victim restitution? Do you favor or oppose the death penalty if it is discriminatorily pursued and discriminatorily applied? If, even apart from racial and ethnic and economic discrimination, it is arbitrarily and unequally pursued and arbitrarily and unequally applied?

Do you favor or oppose the death penalty if the evidence shows it is useless and ineffective as a deterrent, if it is hugely expensive and economically inefficient as compared with other possible penalties and other crime-reducing strategies, and if its use for symbolic and political purposes diverts resources from programs and policies that have an actual chance of making a difference? Do you favor or oppose the death penalty if we know its use will result in the execution of people who are innocent and increase the risk of wrongful conviction? What about if we know that fair process is going to be denied because states fail to provide meaningful representation to defendants and tolerate extreme misconduct by prosecutors, or because elected judges are overriding jury recommendations for life or deciding appeals in cases that were prosecuted in their counties while they were serving as district attorney?

Do you favor or oppose the death penalty if it has proven itself to be just another out-of-control government program that doesn't work? If it permits a small number of prosecutors in a small number of counties to impose extraordinary costs on taxpayers from the other 98 percent of the counties in the country that do not – or only rarely – use it? Do you favor or oppose the death penalty if it undermines our stature in the world, if the spectacle of secret and botched executions becomes a national and international embarrassment? If because of our use of the death penalty, we lose the moral standing to speak out against serious human rights abuses around the world?

So whether I or other prospective jurors could impose the death penalty in a particular case if the evidence supported it is ultimately irrelevant to the critical public policy issues DPIC and I are interested in. Even if you believe that there are individual cases for which the death penalty might be warranted, and even if you believe that we can get it right in some individual cases, it doesn’t justify a policy. A policy needs to be correctly, consistently, evenhandedly, and non-discriminatorily applied. A government program needs to be cost-effective and better than other remedies in fighting crime. These are the critical public policy questions that need to be discussed and need to be addressed.

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Death penalty draws more Americans’ support online than in telephone surveys

Six-in-ten U.S. adults favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, according to an April Pew Research Center survey that was conducted online using the Center’s American Trends Panel . The share of adults who support capital punishment for convicted murderers has been relatively stable in the Center’s online surveys over the past few years.

Opinions about the death penalty have also remained stable in the Center’s telephone surveys during this period. But while there has been relative continuity in Americans’ views across both survey modes, the public consistently expresses more support for the death penalty online than on the phone – a finding that has important consequences for understanding trends on the issue .

As the Center has previously noted , people sometimes – though not always – respond differently to similar questions on the same topics in online and telephone polls. There are a variety of reasons why that might be the case, including the fact that survey respondents’ answers might be influenced by the presence of a live phone interviewer (as opposed to online polls, which are self-administered).

Pew Research Center conducted this study to better understand Americans’ views of the death penalty and to examine the effects of survey mode on attitudes about the death penalty. For this analysis, we most recently surveyed 5,109 U.S. adults in April 2021. Everyone who took part in the April survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

This study also uses data from three pairs of contemporaneous online and phone surveys. In September 2019, we surveyed 9,895 U.S. adults online and 2,004 U.S. adults by phone. In January 2020, we surveyed 12,638 U.S. adults online and 1,504 U.S. adults by phone. And in July and August 2020, we surveyed 11,001 U.S. adults online and 1,750 U.S. adults by phone. All who took part in these online surveys were members of the American Trends Panel at the time they were surveyed. Respondents to the phone surveys were randomly selected using a combination of landline and cellphone random-digit-dial samples, and interviews were conducted in both English and Spanish under the direction of Abt Associates.

Here are the questions used in the April 2021 survey, along with responses, and its methodology . Additional information about the methodology used for each of the earlier surveys is available here:

• September 2019 ATP
• September 2019 phone
• January 2020 ATP
• January 2020 phone
• August 2020 ATP and August 2020 phone

To study possible “mode effects” in the context of Americans’ views about capital punishment, the Center in September 2019 began including questions about the death penalty on surveys using the online American Trends Panel. We asked this question in online and telephone surveys fielded during the same periods three times: in September 2019, January 2020 and August 2020. By asking the question both ways in contemporaneous surveys, we could not only assess differences by survey mode, but also determine whether attitudes changed over the period in question.

On both the ATP and telephone surveys, views remained relatively constant over this period. However, there were sizable – and largely consistent – differences between the two modes.

In a survey conducted on the American Trends Panel in August 2020, 65% of adults said they favored the death penalty for people convicted of murder, while 34% were opposed. In a telephone survey over a nearly identical period, 52% of adults favored the death penalty and 44% opposed it. On the two prior occasions when the Center asked this question in both survey formats, support for the death penalty was 9 and 10 percentage points higher, respectively, in the online surveys than in the phone polls. (There were slight differences in the wording of online and telephone surveys; see topline for question wording . )

The experience of taking surveys is different when respondents are speaking with a live interviewer, as opposed to answering a question online. In addition, survey questions that ask about sensitive or controversial topics – and views of the death penalty may be one such topic – may be more likely to elicit different responses across modes, perhaps attributable to social desirability bias . When mode differences stem from social desirability, data collected via self-administered modes (e.g., online) is typically more accurate than data collected by an interviewer (e.g., by phone), all else being equal.

When it comes to views of the death penalty, mode differences are wider among Democrats than Republicans. In the August 2020 web survey, 83% of Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party said they favored the death penalty, compared with 74% in the phone survey. Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, 49% said they favored the death penalty online, versus 32% on the phone. This pattern was evident all three times the Center asked the question in both modes.

Because this mode effect is more pronounced among Democrats than Republicans – and because Republicans are generally more supportive of the death penalty than Democrats – there are somewhat smaller partisan differences in online surveys than in phone surveys. In the August 2020 online survey, for example, Republicans were 34 percentage points more likely than Democrats to favor the death penalty. In the phone survey conducted the same month, the partisan gap was 42 points.

The pattern of more support for the death penalty in online surveys holds across racial and ethnic groups as well. In the three pairs of surveys, White adults were on average 8 percentage points more likely to say they favored the death penalty online than on the phone. The gaps were even larger among Black and Hispanic adults: 17 points and 18 points, respectively, on average.

Both college graduates and those without college degrees are more likely to favor the death penalty in online surveys than on the phone. Across the three pairs of surveys in this analysis, college graduates were 8 points more likely to say they favored the death penalty online than by phone, on average. Adults without college degrees were an average of 11 points more likely to support capital punishment online than by phone.

Support for the death penalty has been relatively stable in recent years but remains lower than in the mid-1990s

Because of the substantial mode differences in support for the death penalty, online survey results on this question should not directly be compared to phone estimates. However, telephone surveys provide a basis for examining long-term changes in the public’s attitudes toward the death penalty.

These surveys, conducted with a live interviewer asking respondents for their opinions, have shown a steady decline in support for the death penalty in the United States since the mid-1990s. Between 1996 and 2020, the share of Americans saying they favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder declined 26 percentage points (from 78% to 52%). Opposition to the death penalty more than doubled during this period, from 18% to 44%.

Surveys conducted on both the phone and online over the past few years have found largely stable attitudes, with a modest decrease online in support for the death penalty since 2019.

Other survey research organizations have observed similar changes in public opinion about the death penalty over the past 25 years. For example, Gallup surveys conducted by telephone find a similar long-term decline in support , with little change in attitudes in recent years.

Note: Here are the questions used in the April 2021 survey, along with responses, and its methodology .

• Death Penalty
• Online Surveys
• Telephone Surveys

Andrew Daniller is a research associate focusing on politics at Pew Research Center .

Jocelyn Kiley is a senior associate director of research at Pew Research Center .

10 facts about the death penalty in the U.S.

Unlike other u.s. religious groups, most atheists and agnostics oppose the death penalty, most americans favor the death penalty despite concerns about its administration, trump used his clemency power sparingly despite a raft of late pardons and commutations, california is one of 11 states that have the death penalty but haven’t used it in more than a decade, most popular.

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Innocence and the Death Penalty

Melissa Lucio poses for a portrait behind glass at the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas on March 21, 2022. (Image: Ilana Panich-Linsman for the Innocence Project)

In the last 30 years, exoneration cases have exposed the very real shortcomings of the American legal system. 

The Innocence Project has represented innocent people who were wrongly convicted of murder and condemned to death in cases that were compromised by police and prosecutorial misconduct, ineffective assistance of counsel, eyewitness misidentification, unreliable forensic evidence, racial bias, and more. In some instances, our clients have come within days of execution. These cases powerfully establish that — notwithstanding legislative and constitutional guarantees of increased scrutiny for and oversight of such cases — the capital punishment system is deeply flawed and poses an unconscionable threat to innocent people. For these reasons, the death penalty must be abolished. 

Since 1973, at least 200 people have been exonerated from death row in the U.S., according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). A 2014 study estimated that at least 4% of those sentenced to death are innocent. These numbers don’t demonstrate the full scope of the impact that the death penalty has on the problem of wrongful conviction as the threat of the death penalty causes innocent people to plead guilty and induces false testimony from witnesses.

The vast majority of people exonerated from death row are Black or Latinx, and more than half of death row exonerees are Black. Studies consistently demonstrate that the race of the accused and/or race of the victim plays an arbitrary yet determinative role in the administration of the death penalty. This is significant in the context of wrongful conviction because official misconduct has been documented in three-fourths of the cases of Black exonerees and two-thirds of the cases of Latinx exonerees, while official misconduct is present in less than 60% of the cases of white exonerees.

Although the Constitution promises equal justice for all, race continues to affect every stage of a capital case from arrest and investigation to eventual execution. Most homicides are intra-racial (white people are more likely to kill white people, Black people are more likely to kill Black people, etc.), but the use of the death penalty for inter-racial crimes has always been lopsided. Nearly 300 Black people accused of murdering white people have been executed since 1976. That’s almost 17 times more than the number of white people executed for murdering Black people, the DPIC notes.

The Innocence Project currently represents people on death row with strong claims of innocence and supports coalitions working to ban the use of the death penalty. Virginia, Colorado, and New Hampshire became the most recent states to outlaw capital punishment, but 27 states, the federal government, and the U.S. military still allow the use of this arbitrary and brutal punishment.

people exonerated from death row

Black people exonerated from death row, u.s. states still allow the death penalty, death penalty cases, clemente aguirre-jarquin.

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Time Served: 11 years

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International Federation for Human Rights

10 Questions on the Death Penalty

On 10 October, 2018, the World Day Against the Death Penalty focuses on the living conditions of those sentenced to death. Death row is typically characterised by these three factors: - Harsh conditions of detention - The excessive length of incarceration - The anguish of living under a death sentence The typical Egypt death row inmates usually spend their time: isolated from the general prison population and held in solitary confinement size of 1.5mx2m, without a toilet or (…)

On 10 October, 2018, the World Day Against the Death Penalty focuses on the living conditions of those sentenced to death.

Death row is typically characterised by these three factors:

- Harsh conditions of detention - The excessive length of incarceration - The anguish of living under a death sentence

The typical Egypt death row inmates usually spend their time: isolated from the general prison population and held in solitary confinement size of 1.5mx2m, without a toilet or adequate lighting or ventilation. They are only allowed out of the cell for 15 minutes a day to ‘walk’ and to empty the bucket they use as a toilet, they spend as much as 23 hours and 45 minutes a day alone in their cell in a state of constant uncertainty over when they will be executed.

1. Why does Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights oppose the capital punishment?

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights opposes the death penalty in principle and in all cases without exception as it constitutes a grave violation of human rights, namely the right to life and because of its unique and irreversible nature, if the innocence of the accused is proven later it is impossible to bring the defendants back to life. This has indeed happened in Egypt before in cases were executions were carried out under laws that were subsequently declared unconstitutional. If the conditions for full and impartial justice are difficult or impossible to achieve under the best of circumstances and during times of stability; were the institutions of the state and its organs of the administration of justice operate in an efficient and transparent manner, one can only imagine what the status of justice administration is like in these times when the bare minimum of these conditions are not met.

2. Don’t victims of violent crime and their families have a right to justice?

They do. Those who have lost loved ones in violent crimes have the right to see the person responsible held accountable in a fair trial, and our opposition to the death penalty is not meant to understate the magnitude of such crimes, but there is no evidence that executions bring relief to the families of the victims. Evidence suggests that perhaps the most important factor to families is to know the whole truth and hold accountable everyone who was involved in causing harm to their loved ones. Authorities often resort to death sentences as a false consolation instead of doing the actual work involved in finding the real perpetrators of the crime and sometimes they resort to executions to protect some parties from real accountability .

3 If you kill someone else, don’t you deserve to die, too ?

The execution of a person for killing another person is an act of revenge and not justice, society and the authorities acting on its behalf should not resort to the same measures used by criminals. The idea of imposing a punishment of the same type of crime is absurd: a rapist is not punished by rape nor is a thief punished by being subjected to theft, and generally it is not acceptable for the justice system to apply vindictive punitive measures that could only lead to an increase of violence within society and exacerbate the original problem.

4. Doesn’t the death penalty prevent crime?

Scientific studies have not found any evidence that capital punishment is a deterrent to crime. On the contrary, many countries have witnessed a marked decline in the rate of murder and violent crime after abolition of capital punishment, such as Canada, for example1. Perpetrators who plan crimes in advance especially are typically acting in the belief that their crime will not be discovered and so are less likely to be deterred by the nature of the punishment rather than the knowledge that a punishment is likely. Deterrence, thus, is more effectively pursued through maximising the efficiency of investigation and ensuring that crimes are consistently solved and punished, rather than through recommending death penalty as a punishment.

5. What about capital punishment for terrorists?

The death penalty does not constitute an effective deterrent to terrorism, and it does not seem reasonable that an individual who is prepared to blow himself up to achieve whatever political ends will be deterred by the possibility of execution. In fact, the execution of terrorism suspects is often counterproductive as their supporters elevate them to the ranks of martyrs, whereby their symbolic status and power outlives them and emboldens terrorist groups and their ability to recruit and mobilise based on the desire for revenge and retaliation.

6. Isn’t it better to execute someone than to lock them up forever?

The death penalty is a final and irreversible punishment, thus cutting off the possibility to rectify or redress any wrongdoing if new evidence emerges that may exonerate the accused. It also deprives the accused, if proven guilty, of the opportunity to repent, change his or her course of life and reintegrate into society. The claim that execution can be a effective tool to reduce numbers of prisoners and ease prison capacity and ass ociated costs is inhumane and involves a great deal of disregard for the value of life.

7. Is there a humane and painless way to execute a person?

No. All forms and methods of execution are inhumane. To say that there is a "humane" way to kill people is to try to make the executions appear more acceptable to the public on whose behalf the execution is carried out and to make the governments that carry out the punishment seem less criminal than the killers themselves. It should also be noted that the exceptional cruelty of the punishment is not limited to the moment of execution or its method, but extends to the waiting period of the condemned who live in constant fear of being killed at any moment.

8 . What if public opinion is in favour of the death penalty?

To many observers it seems that capital punishment enjoys wide support and approval among the Egyptian public, and many see it as a decisive and radical solution to all forms of political and criminal deviation and almost as a magical tool to uproot societal evil. The fact of the matter is that this issue has not been adequately debated and our society has not had the opportunity to identify and address its many problematic aspects. There are many factors that underlie the process of executing someone, which often remain incomprehensible and unknown to the public. These include the risk of the execution of an innocent person, the failure to ensure fair trial procedures, and the discriminatory nature of this punishment.

9. Is the battle to abolish the death penalty being won on a global level?

Yes, there is a growing global trend towards the abolition of the death penalty. The number of states that abolished the death penalty for all crimes is currently 104 representing more than 70% of the states of the world, including Djibouti (a member of the League of Arab States); the only Arab, Islamic state to have abolished the penalty. This is in addition to seven states that abolished the penalty for ordinary criminal offenses, leaving the possibility of death sentence for exceptional circumstances only. On the other hand, ten other countries abolished the death penalty through practice, meaning they have suspended implementation for more than ten years, including five Arab states: Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, the Union of the Comoros and Tunisia. This leaves a minority of 57 countries around the world that still apply the death penalty

10. Does the abolition of the death penalty conflict with religious laws and beliefs?

In general, all religions call for tolerance and are in favour of forgiveness/reprieve over retaliation. It is widely believed that the abolition of the punishment conflicts with Islamic law. On the contrary, the conditions necessary to prove a crime warranting “qisas”, the concept most frequently cited by those who advocate for retaining capital punishment in order to remain faithful to the tenants of sharia; those conditions almost guarantee that the death penalty is rarely carried out. There are only two ways to prove a crime warranting qisas: the testimony of direct, trustworthy witnesses or the confession of the accused person. For the former, the testimonies must be consistent with each other in their most minute detail, and any inconsistency renders the testimonies void. For the latter condition, the accused must confess before a judge, and there must be guarantees that confessions were not obtained under duress or under any pressure during interrogation.

• Should the Death Penalty Be Legal?
• Does Clemency Serve as a Safeguard in Capital Punishment Sentences?
• Are “Death-Qualified” Juries Problematic?
• Should Life without Parole Replace the Death Penalty?
• Does the Death Penalty Deter Crime?
• Should the Death Penalty Be Used for Retribution for Victims and/or Society?
• Does the Death Penalty Offer Closure or Solace to Victims’ Families?
• Should States Authorize Other Methods of Execution Such as Hanging or the Firing Squad?
• Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished Because Innocent People May Be Executed?
• Is the Death Penalty Immoral?
• Is Participation in Executions Ethical for Medical Professionals?
• Should the US President Reinstate the Federal Death Penalty?
• Should the US President Commute the Sentences of Those on Federal Death Row?

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We fight on behalf of those whose right to life, to a fair trial and to humane treatment is at stake.

Photo credits:   James Guthrie Gates of Belize Central Prison

We are prepared to work everywhere the death penalty is imposed - we will never turn a death penalty case down

Our Activities

Initial Contact

We receive a letter from a prisoner or family member

Assemble legal team

We instruct leading human rights barristers and forensic experts to advise on the case

Building the case

We carry out research and start building a legal case

Take case to court

We represent our client in court, challenging their conviction and/ or sentence

We provide free legal representation and assistance to individuals facing the death penalty and other vulnerable prisoners.

Legal representation is expensive and in many countries legal aid is limited or unavailable. Without legal assistance or access to mental health assessments or forensic expertise, it is frequently the poorest and most marginalised individuals who end up receiving the harshest penalties.

We provide access to justice through free legal assistance, principally at the appeal stage. We also bring strategic litigation to strike down cruel, unfair and inhuman laws. In doing so we create lasting legal precedents, ensuring that our impact stretches far beyond those individuals we directly assist. Our legal work has saved thousands of prisoners from execution.

Our legal work falls into four main categories:-  

• Representation before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council: For those countries that retain the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London as their final court of appeal, we provide free legal representation before the court.
• Assistance before domestic courts:  We assist local legal teams in proceedings before domestic courts and support constitutional challenges to restrict the application and scope of the death penalty.
• Assistance to foreign nationals facing the death penalty:  We work with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office to provide free legal assistance to British nationals facing the death penalty. We also work with other consular authorities to assist their nationals facing the death penalty in a foreign country.
• Cases brought before international tribunals: Where violations of international human rights law have occurred, we bring cases before international tribunals to highlight these breaches and seek remedies. We have brought more complaints before international tribunals than any other death penalty organisation.

Wherever we work, we instruct experts including leading barristers and, where appropriate, forensic psychiatrists, psychologists and other experts, all who provide their time and services without charge.

We deliver practical and targeted training to judges, lawyers, medical professionals and those working within the criminal justice system on human rights law and issues relating to the death penalty.

For the criminal justice process to be fair, it must function effectively. Gaps in the implementation of human rights and inconsistencies in how the death penalty is applied can lead to miscarriages of justice.

We work with local partners to identify the most neglected and misunderstood issues within the criminal justice process to increase human rights protections. Following successful legal challenges, we provide training on the impact of the judgment, to ensure that the law is applied properly. We also engage members of the judiciary in dialogue around key issues and facilitate international exchange and knowledge-sharing. To accompany our training initiatives we produce practical professional resources to assist those involved in capital cases.

We commission and publish original research and resources to address knowledge gaps and deepen understanding on the death penalty.

In many countries there is a lack of publicly available information and data about the death penalty and how it is applied in practice. Myths about the death penalty often go unchallenged, leading to misinformed policymaking and public debate. For example, perceived public support for the death penalty is frequently claimed to be a barrier to abolition, but there is often little data to back this up.

We commission and publish academic research and targeted reports to increase knowledge and understanding on the death penalty. Covering thematic issues such as public opinion, conditions of detention and the implementation of human rights law, these resources are developed in close consultation with local partners to respond to specific needs. Our publications are used by NGOs, lawyers and policymakers around the world as tools to effect lasting change in policy and practice.

We engage governments and all key stakeholders in dialogue on the death penalty.

Abolition of the death penalty requires strong political leadership. However, a lack of information and polarised opinions on capital punishment can make constructive political debate hard to achieve.

We provide expert information and assistance to governments and advice to the diplomatic community. We bring together key stakeholders including members of the judiciary, legal professionals, the media and civil society organisations to facilitate dialogue on the death penalty. Through sustained engagement, we question entrenched positions and raise awareness of human rights issues to create an environment for criminal justice reform.

Where We Operate

We work in over 30 countries around the world, with a particular focus on the Commonwealth. We are prepared to work wherever the death penalty is imposed. Partnership working is at the heart of what we do. Wherever we operate, we always work with dedicated local partners and other stakeholders. We will never work in a country without an invitation.

Our latest news and events

Read the latest news on The Death Penalty Project and our work from around the world

PRESS RELEASE: Catalogue of errors leads to a miscarriage of justice in St Kitts and Nevis

Strengthening the Abolitionist Movement: Launch of the Global Consortium for Death Penalty Abolition

PRESS RELEASE: British National at risk of the Death Penalty in DRC

PRESS RELEASE: Privy Council overturns murder and armed robbery convictions in 2015 joint enterprise trial in The Bahamas

PRESS RELEASE: Systemic failures in DNA testing leads to release of Bermudan man wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for more than 10 years

DW: Will Taiwan abolish the death penalty this year?

PRESS RELEASE: Future of the death penalty in Taiwan to be determined by historic legal challenge

The Telegraph: Will Africa be the next continent to abolish the death penalty?

Privy Council quashes murder convictions in Jamaica, highlighting the importance of fair trial rights

Focus on Africa podcast - Why African countries are saying no to the death penalty

Zimbabwe's Cabinet backs proposed legislation to abolish the death penalty

Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty: Dignity. Justice. International Symposium on the Right to Life - Taiwan Death Penalty Prison Interview Project

BLOG: Human Rights Day 2023 – Challenging the myth of public support for the death penalty

Life After Death Row: interview with Wenceslaus James

Sunshine Today T & T: "I heard my cell mate executed"

Attorney to Government: Make up your mind about the death penalty

Longest serving death row prisoner in T&T released by High Court

Death row inmate released after resentencing - FREED AFTER 30 YEARS

PRESS RELEASE: Longest serving death row prisoner in Trinidad & Tobago released by High Court

Privy council holds presidental commutation can remedy breach of…

Legal provision restricting the right to appeal in death penalty cases…

Norwegian-British prisoner released from death row in DRC amid growing health concerns

Stay up-to-date with our work.

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• Race and the Death Penalty
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• Mental Health and the Death Penalty
• Public Opinion and the Death Penalty
• The Death Penalty for Juveniles
• The Expansion of the Federal Death Penalty
• Racial and Geographical Disparities in the Federal Death Penalty
• Post-Conviction in Capital Cases
• International Law and Opinion
• Media Influence in Capital Cases
• Mitigation in Capital Cases
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Jury Instructions: What Jurors Understand

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Jury Selection Jury Instructions Issues Highlighted by the Juan Garza Case Related Links

Death penalty cases are complex and require the jury to make decisions about life and death that are far different from the usual juror decision of "guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." Research indicates that jurors in capital cases do not fully understand many aspects of the instructions they receive. For example, jurors are often uncertain about their alternatives in a death penalty case: if they sentence an inmate to life in prison, will he or she ever be released? Moreover, some jurors may not realize the important legal distinctions between mitigating and aggravating factors, or even what the words themselves mean.

Jury Selection

• "The Role of Juries in State Courts" (184KB PDF)
• "The Deadly Paradox of Capital Jurors" (204 KB)
• Please register or login for free access to our collection of supplementary materials.

Courts can eliminate potential jurors who are not willing to vote for the death penalty in a capital case ( “death qualification” ). Views on the death penalty correlate to some degree with race, gender, and religious beliefs.

Jurors who are not eliminated by the judge "for cause" because of their death penalty views can be eliminated by lawyers through "peremptory challenges." The lawyers from both sides are allowed a set number of juror strikes without having to show that the removed jurors are biased. Peremptory strikes are prohibited if they are based solely on the juror's race, gender or religion. Lawyers may strike jurors who lean against the death penalty, and this leaning may allow more members of a particular race or gender to be eliminated from the jury.

Jury Instructions

Guilt phase and sentencing phase decisions.

• Weeks v. Angelone, 528 U.S. 225 (2000)
• Sample Federal Jury Instructions, Penalty Phase (150KB PDF)
• "Foreclosed Impartiality in Capital Sentencing" (14MB PDF)
• “Racial Discrimination and the Death Penalty in the post-Furman Era” (211KB PDF)
• “The Capital Jury Project: Rationale, Design, and Preview of Early Findings” (5MB PDF)
• “Aggravation and Mitigation in Capital Cases” (635KB PDF)
• Recent Supreme Court Cases on Jury Instructions

Once chosen to serve, the jury is given instructions at various points in the case. Death penalty trials consist of two phases: the guilt phase and the sentencing phase. Jurors are instructed not to make decisions on sentencing until after they have found the defendant guilty and have heard all the evidence presented in the sentencing phase.

The Capital Jury Project, a national research endeavor funded by the National Science Foundation, interviewed people who had served on death penalty juries from 15 states around the country. They found that approximately 50% of jurors interviewed decided what the penalty should be before the sentencing phase of the trial. This is before they have heard mitigating evidence from the defense or received instructions from the judge about how to make the punishment decision.

Mitigating and Aggravating Factors

Jurors may find the differences between finding mitigating and aggravating factors to be confusing. In death penalty cases, mitigating factors do not have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and jurors do not have to agree on the existence of a particular mitigating factor or on how much weight it should be given. However, jurors must find that at least one aggravating factor has been proven by the prosecution beyond a reasonable doubt in order to find the defendant is eligible for the death penalty.

The Capital Jury Project found that 45% of jurors failed to understand they were allowed to consider any mitigating evidence during the sentencing phase of the trial, not just the factors listed in the instructions. In addition, two-thirds of jurors failed to realize that unanimity was not required for findings of mitigation. The law allows that even if only one juror finds a factor to be mitigating that finding is relevant for the whole jury. The Project also found that 44% of jurors believed the death penalty was required if the defendant's conduct was heinous, vile or depraved, even though the Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty cannot be required because specific aggravating circumstances have been established.

Jurors often have a difficult time sentencing a defendant to death, in part because it is an inherently vague process, especially in terms of weighing mitigating and aggravating factors. Jurors are typically told to weigh the aggravating and mitigating circumstances presented in the case, but they are not given any scale to perform this task.

Understanding Jury Instructions

• “Misguided Instructions: Do Jurors Accurately Understand The Law In Death Penalty Trials?”
• “The Rocky Road to Legal Reform: Improving the Language of Jury Instructions” (389KB PDF)
• "Still Singularly Agonizing: Law's Failure to Purge Arbitrariness from Capital Sentencing" (2.9MB PDF)
• “Mitigation and the Study of Lives: On the Roots of Violent Criminality and the Nature of Capital Justice” (6.8MB PDF)
• Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U.S. 154 (1994).
• "Mature Coping Among Life-Sentenced Inmates" (43KB PDF)
• "I Did Not Want to Kill Him, But I Thought I Had To” (352KB PDF)
• “Death by Default: An Empirical Demonstration of False and Forced Choices in Capital Sentencing” (10.6MB PDF)
• "Deadly Confusion: Juror Instructions in Capital Cases" (158KB PDF)
• “Correcting Deadly Confusion: Responding to Jury Inquiries in Capital Cases” (90KB PDF)

It can be very difficult for ordinary citizens to understand the abstruse legal framework that the courts have constructed around the death penalty. Craig Haney, a prominent psychologist in California, found that even well-educated people misunderstood the instructions to the jury. His research indicated that:

Understanding the Meaning of a Life Sentence

The U.S. Supreme Court held in Simmons v. South Carolina (1994) that when a defendant’s future dangerousness is at issue at the sentencing phase of a capital trial, as a matter of fundamental fairness, the defendant is entitled to have the jury accurately informed if the only alternative to a death sentence is life without parole. The “future dangerousness” of a defendant often factors in to whether or not the jury sentences the defendant to death. Jurors may choose a death sentence because they incorrectly believe a defendant will otherwise be paroled and released back into society.

The Capital Jury Project found that most jurors grossly underestimated the amount of time a defendant would serve in prison if not sentenced to death, and the sooner that jurors believed a defendant would return to society if not given the death penalty, the more likely they were to vote for death.

Issues Highlighted by the Juan Garza Case

In his appeals, Juan Garza's attorneys argued that his jury did not consist of a random selection of people from his community in Brownsville, Texas. They argued that some jurors who were rejected because of their views on the death penalty should have been kept on the jury because they might be able to impose a death sentence in some cases. (See Witherspoon v. Illinois ). Garza and his attorneys also questioned why other jurors were not eliminated because of the pre-trial publicity in the case. These appeals were rejected by the courts.

• Definitions of Key Terms
• Juan Garza Timeline
• U.S. v. Flores and Garza, 63 F. 3d 1342 (5th Circuit, 1995)
• Clemency Petition (334KB PDF)
• Original Writ of Habeas Corpus (1.2MB PDF)
• Rompilla v. Horn (563KB PDF)

At the sentencing phase of Garza's trial, the prosecution argued that if he was not sentenced to death, he could be eligible for parole in 20 years. The prosecution also raised issues of Garza’s future dangerousness (see Simmons v. South Carolina ). Under federal law, however, Garza would have to serve a sentence of life without parole if he was not given a death sentence. Garza and his attorneys objected to the prosecutor's remarks and asked that the jury be given specific instructions on his ineligibility for parole, but this instruction was denied. Garza raised this issue on appeal and in his clemency petition, but the courts ultimately ruled that recent Supreme Court opinions on this issue could not be applied to his claim.

• Would a jury made up of supporters of the death penalty be more likely to convict a defendant than one made up of both opponents and supporters? Are there recent studies that support your view? How could death penalty cases be conducted so as to avoid the problem that death-qualifying the jury raises?
• Most Americans support the death penalty. Which subgroups in the U.S. have the highest percentage of opposition to the death penalty? Assuming a jury can be completely fair on the question of guilt or innocence, is it proper to allow a jury selection process that results in fewer people of certain races, gender, or religious beliefs serving as the decision-makers for sentencing? If you were a defense attorney, would you deliberately try to get people of certain races or gender on your jury? What if you were the prosecutor?
• The U.S. Supreme Court has issued key decisions about how the jury may be chosen and what it may hear in capital cases. Consider one or more of the following cases. Discuss the problem addressed by the Court, and how they resolved the issue: Witherspoon v. Illinois (superseded in part by Wainwright v. Witt), Lockett v. Ohio, Lockhart v. McCree, Simmons v. South Carolina, Miller-el v. Dretke).
• Some defendants have appealed to the Supreme Court to have their death sentences overturned on the grounds that the jury did not understand the instructions on the law and consequently believed they had no choice but to sentence the defendant to death. Read the case of Weeks v. Angelone and analyze the opinions of the majority and dissenting justices on this issue.
• Read the sample jury instructions provide above. What would you change to make the instructions easier to understand? What are some possible strategies for making sure jurors understand the instructions?

Related Links

Mitigation in Capital Cases Representation in Capital Cases

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Rikki Schlott

Professor fired for ‘faking data to prove lynching makes whites want longer sentences for blacks,’ 6 studies retracted.

Florida State University criminology professor Eric Stewart was a guru of the claim that “systemic racism” infests America’s police and American society.

Now he’s out of a job on account of “extreme negligence” in his research.

The academic was fired after almost 20 years of his data — including figures used in an explosive study, which claimed the legacy of lynchings made whites perceive blacks as criminals, and that the problem was worse among conservatives — were found to be in question.

College authorities said he was being fired for “incompetence” and “false results.”

Among the studies he has had to retract were claims that whites wanted longer sentences for blacks and Latinos.

To date, six of Stewart’s articles published in major academic journals like Criminology and Law and Society Review between 2003 and 2019 have been fully retracted after allegations the professor’s data was fake or so badly flawed it should not have been published.

The professor’s termination came four years after his former graduate student Justin Pickett blew the whistle on his research.

Pickett said they had worked together in 2011 researching whether the public was demanding longer sentences for black and Hispanic criminals as those minority populations grew, with the paper claiming they did. But Stewart had fiddled the sample size to deliver that result when the real research did not, Pickett said.

When the investigation into Stewart began in 2020, he claimed he was the victim and that Pickett “essentially lynched me and my academic character.”

After sixteen years as a professor of criminology at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Provost James Clark formally notified Stewart he was being terminated in a July 13 letter.

“I do not see how you can teach our students to be ethical researchers or how the results of future research projects conducted by you could be deemed as trustworthy,” Clark wrote to Stewart, who has been  absent from his role  since March.

Clark said as well as the six officially retracted studies, other work by Stewart was “in doubt.”

The retracted studies looked into contentious social issues, like whether the public perceives black and Latino people as threats and the role of racial discrimination in America’s criminal justice system.

One 2019 study, which has been retracted , suggested historical lynchings make white people today perceive black people as threats.

Stewart floated the idea “that this effect will be greater among whites… where socioeconomic disadvantage and political conservatism are greater.” 

Another retracted 2018 study suggested that white Americans view black and Latino people as “criminal threats,” and suggested that perceived threat could lead to “state-sponsored social control.”

And in a third, Stewart claimed Americans wanted tougher sentences for Latinos because their community was increasing in numbers and becoming more economically successful.

“Latino population growth and perceived Latino criminal and economic threat significantly predict punitive Latino sentiment,” he concluded in the 2015 study, which has now been retracted .

Stewart’s research also delved into the relationship between incarceration and divorce, street violence, the impact of tough neighborhoods on adolescents, whether street gardens reduce crime, and how race impacts student discipline in schools.

But the disgraced professor was able to rise to prominence as an influencer in his field despite his studies from as early as 2003 now being retracted.

Stewart was a widely-cited scholar, with north of 8,500 citations by other researchers,  according to Google Scholar  — a measure of his clout as an academic.

He was vice president and fellow at the American Society of Criminology, who  honored him as one of four highly distinguished criminologists  in 2017.

He was also a W.E.B. DuBois fellow at the National Institute of Justice.

The professor received north of $3.5 million in grant support from major organizations and taxpayer-funded entities,  according to his resume.

The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, the National Science Foundation, which is an arm of the federal government, and the National Institute of Justice, which is run by the Department of Justice, have all funneled money into research Stewart presided over.

The National Institute of Mental Health, a branch of the NIH, poured $3.2 million into research on how African Americans transition into adulthood.

Stewart presided over that initiative as co-principal investigator from 2007 to 2012.

Meanwhile, he reportedly raked in a  $190,000 annual salary  at FSU, a public university.

While there  he served  on the school’s diversity, promotion and tenure committees, giving him a say over who got ahead on campus.

He even passed judgment on students accused of cheating and academic dishonesty themselves, as a member of FSU’s Academic Honor Policy Hearing Committee.

The fired professor, 51, graduated from Fort Valley State University and earned his Ph.D. from Iowa State University in 2000.

His colleagues believed he would become an editor of Criminology, the premier journal in the field.

The journal did not respond to a request for comment.

FSU and Stewart also did not respond to request for comment. Pickett declined to comment.

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