Alaskans Against the Death Penalty

The FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2017, released by the U.S. Department of Justice, reports that murder rates stabilized across the United States in 2017, decreasing marginally compared to adjusted homicide figures from 2016 but remaining above the record lows recorded earlier in the decade. The initial FBI crime figures for 2017 report 17,284 murders across the United States in 2017, compared to 17,413 in 2016, dropping the nationwide murder rate from 5.4 murders per 100,000 people to 5.3. The homicide numbers are virtually identical to the initial FBI homicide figures included in the 2016 FBI Uniform Crime Report, which initially reported 17,250 murders and a murder rate of 5.3 murders per 100,000 people in 2016. Once again, states with the death penalty tended to have higher murder rates than states without the death penalty, with Louisiana and Missouri topping the list at 12.4 and 9.8 murders per 100,000 population, respectively. Seven of the nine states with the highest murder rates (and sixteen of the twenty highest) are death-penalty states, while five of the eight states with the lowest murder rates (and nine of the lowest fifteen) do not have the death penalty. New Hampshire, which has the death penalty, and North Dakota and Maine, which do not, had the lowest murder rates at 1.0, 1.3, and 1.7 murders per 100,000 population, respectively. The data also supports the idea that abolishing the death penalty does not make states more dangerous. Delaware, which ended the death penalty in 2016, saw a 7.8% decrease in its murder rate from 2016 to 2017. As in past years, regional data showed that more executions do not mean lower murder rates. The South, which has performed far more executions than any other region, continued to have the highest murder rate (6.4 per 100,000 people), while the Northeast, which has carried out only four executions since 1976, had the lowest (3.5). FBI data shows that murder rates have fallen dramatically since the 1980s and 1990s, contributing to the nationwide decline in capital punishment. The current murder rate is 45.9% below 1991's murder rate of 9.8 per 100,000 people. However, the decline in new death sentences has been even greater, with the 39 death sentences imposed in 2017 87.5% below the 315 death sentences imposed in 1994 and 1996.

(Crime in the United States, 2017, Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 24, 2018; Press Release, FBI Releases 2017 Crime Statistics, FBI National Press Office, September 24, 2018; Devlin Barrett and Mark Berman, FBI says murder, violent crimes fell slightly last year after previous increases, Washington Post, September 24, 2018.) Read the FBI 2017 Murder Statistics by State. See Murder Rates.

Sixteen years after a notorious and now-discredited forensic witness told a Mississippi jury that Jeffrey Havard had sexually abused and shaken his girlfriend's six-month-old daughter to death, Havard's death sentence—but not his conviction—has been overturned. On September 14, 2018, Adams County Circuit Judge Forrest Johnson ruled that state pathologist Steven Hayne's recantation of his diagnosis that infant Chloe Britt had been a victim of Shaken Baby Syndrome was "not sufficient to undermine this court's confidence in the conviction," but that "there is a cautious disturbance in confidence of the sentence of death, even if slight." Havard's co-counsel, Graham Carner, told the Mississippi Clarion Ledger, "With all due respect, we think the court got it wrong. We are disappointed, but we are not done." Washington Post columnist Radley Balko criticized Johnson's five-page ruling—which repeatedly misspells the expert's name as "Haynes"—as "gutless" and "sloppy." Balko, whose book The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South exposed rampant irregularities in forensic testimony in Mississippi murder cases, said, “It doesn’t seem like too much to ask that the judge correctly spell the name of the state’s expert whose testimony is the entire reason that the hearing took place.” During a 2002 trial that rocketed from jury selection to a death sentence in just two days, the state—supported by Hayne's testimony—argued that Havard had anally and orally raped the infant and shaken her sufficiently to cause injuries that would later kill her. The defense presented a single witness who provided all of three pages of testimony, failing to challenge the forensic testimony in the case. Defense counsel also failed to explain to the jury that, as Balko writes, Havard supposedly "anally raped the infant, orally raped her, shook her violently enough cause injuries that would later — but not immediately — kill her, then bathed and cleaned her" so thoroughly that "none of Havard’s hair, skin cells or semen was found on or inside the girl," "dressed her, and tucked her into bed as if nothing had happened" — all in the time it took Chloe's mother to go the store "to buy some burrito supplies." Since the trial, Hayne has recanted his testimony that Chloe was sexually assaulted and says he was wrong to attribute the child’s head injuries to SBS (Shaken Baby Syndrome). Hayne had testified under oath that he regularly performed 1,500 or more autopsies each year, nearly five times the maximum number recommended by the National Association of Medical Examiners. He had never been certified in forensic pathology by the American Board of Pathology and failed the certification exam in 1980. Three other reputable experts who reviewed Hayne’s autopsy report found no evidence of abuse on the infant. In 2008, he was barred from doing autopsies for Mississippi prosecutors and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit called his work declared "discredited." At least ten men and women have been exonerated from death rows across the United States after having been wrongly convicted for killing a child. In the cases of Rodricus Crawford and Sabrina Butler, the medical evidence also showed that no crime had occurred, but the defendants were convicted based on false forensic testimony. In April 2018, Vicente Benavides was exonerated from California’s death row after the prosecution presented false forensic testimony claiming that a toddler in his care had been sexually assaulted.

(Jeff Amy, Death penalty overturned, guilt upheld in shaken baby case, Associated Press, September 14, 2018; Jerry Mitchell, After 16 years, Jeffrey Havard is off Mississippi's death row, Mississippi Clarion Ledger, September 14, 2018; Radley Balko, The murder evidence evaporated, but Jeffrey Havard still sits in a Mississippi prison, September 19, 2018; Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington, This Man Is on Death Row for Killing a 6-Month-Old. But What If We're Wrong About Shaken Baby Syndrome?, Reason, April 2018.) Read the trial court's opinion here. See Innocence. Find Radley Balko's book on systemic false forensic evidence in Mississippi here.