skip to main content
skip to newscasts

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Public News Service Logo
facebook instagram linkedin reddit youtube twitter
view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

SD public defense duties shift from counties to state; SCOTUS appears skeptical of restricting government communications with social media companies; Trump lawyers say he can't make bond; new scholarships aim to connect class of 2024 to high-demand jobs.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

The SCOTUS weighs government influence on social media, and who groups like the NRA can do business with. Biden signs an executive order to advance women's health research and the White House tells Israel it's responsible for the Gaza humanitarian crisis.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Midwest regenerative farmers are rethinking chicken production, Medicare Advantage is squeezing the finances of rural hospitals and California's extreme swing from floods to drought has some thinking it's time to turn rural farm parcels into floodplains.

Report: 1 in 4 Death-Row Inmates Has Intellectual Disability

play audio
Play

Monday, December 26, 2016   

PORTLAND, Ore. — One-quarter of people on Oregon's death row most likely suffer from some form of intellectual disability or brain damage, according to a new report.

The Fair Punishment Project found that, alongside those with intellectual disabilities, people who endured severe childhood trauma or who weren't yet old enough to purchase alcohol at the time of their crimes make up two-thirds of death-row prisoners.

Rob Smith, director of the Fair Punishment Project, pointed to a 2002 Supreme Court decision that found the death penalty unconstitutional for people with intellectual impairments.

"What we found was that people on Oregon's death row look very close to the kind of impairments that the Supreme Court has ruled leave you categorically ineligible for the death penalty,” Smith said, "and that was very concerning to us."

Although 35 inmates currently sit on death row, only two people have been executed in Oregon over the past 40 years. Earlier this year, a Multnomah County judge vacated the death sentence of a man with an IQ of 61; a score which placed him in the range of intellectual disability and in the bottom two percent of the population generally.

Gov. Kate Brown has continued former Gov. John Kitzhaber's moratorium on executions. But Smith said that doesn't alleviate the effects of keeping the death penalty on the table in Oregon.

"The death penalty is a fiction, but it's an incredibly damaging and costly and reckless decision,” Smith said. “And it's something that seems to be out of keeping with the way I understand Oregonians to view themselves, which is reasonable and measured and prudent."

A study released last month by researchers at Lewis and Clark College and Seattle University found that Oregonians have spent $140 million in pursuit of the death penalty, and that costs of trial and incarceration in death-penalty cases are nearly twice the costs of life imprisonment or other lesser penalties.




get more stories like this via email

more stories
Iowa families can apply for up to $7,600 a year for private school costs. (Adobe Stock)

Social Issues

play sound

An ethics committee in the Republican-led Iowa House has dismissed a complaint filed by a group of community activists against a state lawmaker for hi…


play sound

Each spring, hundreds of thousands of California high school seniors have to figure out if they can afford to go to college in the fall - and two new …

Health and Wellness

play sound

A health care workforce shortage in New Hampshire is leaving Alzheimer's patients and their families with few options for treatment. Patients facing …


South Dakota ranks 49th in the country for its contribution to indigent legal defense costs, according to a 2023 report from the Indigent Legal Services Task Force. (Adobe Stock)

Social Issues

play sound

South Dakota is creating an Office of Indigent Legal Services after House Bill 1057 passed the Legislature with nearly unanimous support this month…

Environment

play sound

A Knoxville-based environmental group is voicing concerns over what it sees as an increasing financial strain imposed on taxpayers by nuclear weapons …

Environment

play sound

A bipartisan law set to take effect this summer prohibits foreign adversaries from buying Hoosier farmland. The signature of Gov. Eric Holcomb was …

Social Issues

play sound

Today, people across Arizona are voting in the Presidential Preference Election, a chance for registered Democrats and Republicans to choose their …

 

Phone: 303.448.9105 Toll Free: 888.891.9416 Fax: 208.247.1830 Your trusted member- and audience-supported news source since 1996 Copyright © 2021