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July 29, 2024
Intriguing DPIC analysis of capital clemency grants over last 46 years
The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) recently posted here an interesting analysis of "all 82 grants of clemency to individual death-sentenced prisoners between 1977-2023, excluding mass clemency grants." Here is how D{IC summarizes its findings at the start of the analysis:
In a new analysis, the Death Penalty Information Center has found that executive officials most often cite disproportionate sentencing, possible innocence, and mitigation factors such as intellectual disability or mental illness as reasons to grant clemency in capital cases. Ineffective defense lawyering and official misconduct are also common factors in clemency grants. While present in fewer cases, support for clemency from the victim’s family or a decisionmaker in the original trial, such as a prosecutor or juror, appears to have a powerful impact. Prisoners frequently offer evidence of rehabilitation and remorse at clemency hearings, but this evidence is cited less often by officials.
Here is another notable part of the DPIC's analysis:
We found that about half of cases (47.6%) had more than one stated or apparent reason for clemency, illustrating the compounding nature of legal violations and unfair practices in capital cases. However, this did not split evenly by category: while two-thirds of possible innocence cases had possible innocence as the only apparent reason for clemency, only one rehabilitation/remorse case out of ten had that factor as the only reason. In other words, executive officials appeared confident in citing possible innocence as the sole reason for a clemency grant, or in granting clemency when innocence was the predominant argument, but almost always relied on another justification when rehabilitation/remorse played a role in the case.
July 29, 2024 at 09:23 PM | Permalink