These cases illustrate instances where defendants facing the death penalty opted for plea agreements resulting in life imprisonment without parole just to avoid the death penalty. They would rather spend life in prison without parole than face the risk of the death...
President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order on the death penalty that directs the attorney general to reinstate the federal death penalty and “take all necessary and lawful action” to ensure that states have enough lethal injection drugs to carry out...
This piece by Dr. John Lott appeared in the Billings Gazette, Helena Independent Record, Missoulian, Montana Standard, and the Ravioli Republic, all in Montana. President Joe Biden has recently commuted death sentences to life sentences for 37 of the 40 men who are on...
Dr. John Lott has a new op-ed piece at Townhall. President Biden today commuted the death sentences to life sentences for 37 of the 40 men who are on the federal government’s death row. Those spared included child killers and mass murderers. Ironically, 36 of...
Nikki Goeser and John Lott have a new op-ed at the Washington Times about why we need to bring back the death penalty. . Amidst the high murder rate of the last couple of years, it is little wonder that Americans support the death penalty by at least...
Dr. John Lott debated Fordham University Law School Professor Deborah Denno on Turkish television about the death penalty in the US. (Thursday, April 27, 2017)
John Lott's newest piece at National Review Online's The Corner replying to a piece by Andrew Cohen at the Atlantic starts this way: Death-penalty opponents are engaging in a lot of hyperbole. As an example, in the Atlantic this past Thursday, Andrew Cohen went after...
The 2012 National Research Council report on "Deterrence and the Death Penalty" has a table showing only 10 panel studies on the death penalty (those shown above in plain type). No explanation is provided for why these studies are excluded. I have placed one of my...
On Sunday in the Washington Post, Radley Balko attacked a recent piece that CPRC's John Lott had on the death penalty. John Lott's piece that responds to Balko starts this way: The death-penalty debate goes on. After a piece that I wrote about the debate last week,...
How far will death penalty opponents go to advance their cause? Our newest piece at National Review Online starts this way: After the recent mishandled execution in Oklahoma, in which the murderer ended up dying from a heart attack, death-penalty opponents pounced....
Data on homicide offenders by race from 1976 to 2005 is available here. After that the data is available from the annual FBI UCR reports. The bottom line is that while whites account for less than half of murderers, they are almost two-thirds of those who are...
The one modern case that death penalty opponents point to that comes closest to meeting this claim involves Claude Jones Texas, who was convicted in 1989 and executed in 2000. Two pieces of evidence were involved in his trial: the testimony of two accomplice who...