Capital Punishment Research Initiative (CPRI)
Overview & Projects:
The CPRI has operated fairly informally since its inception at the School of Criminal Justice in the late 90s. Projects are carried out on a volunteer basis, with collaboration among professors and graduate students, both from the School of Criminal Justice in Albany as well as other universities from around the nation. The CPRI uses both a LISTSERV and periodic meetings to keep participants apprised of the status of the various projects and initiatives. From time to time, guest speakers come to talk to the group and others at the SCJ about their experiences and research.
The CPRI is involved in several ongoing archival and research projects of national scope (Abolitionist Oral History Project (AOHP); Capital Jury Project II (CJP2); National Death Penalty Archives (NDPA); Clemency Petitions as a Key to Wrongful Executions). These projects all involve collaborating with other scholars from various institutions around the nation. Two more scholarly research efforts, involving personnel at both the School of Criminal Justice in Albany and other universities, are in the planning stage (A Study of State and Federal Death Rows; Surviving Family Members of Homicide). At the same time, the CPRI is in the process of (a) designing and constructing its own online presence, (b) assessing the feasibility of creating a Journal of Death Penalty Research and Jurisprudence, and (c) searching for public and/or private sources of funding.
Ongoing Projects:
Abolitionist Oral History Project (AOHP): The Abolitionist Oral History Project (AOHP) involves conducting interviews with a wide variety of American activists in an effort to build an oral history of the mid-20th century and post-Furman movement to end capital punishment in America. The project involves interviewing individuals who reflect on topics including: (1) their own work in the abolition movement, the successes and failures of abolitionist work, prospects for abolition in the future; (2) particular aspects of abolitionist work, such as the moratorium movement; and (3) related events, such as attempts to prevent executions in various states.
The interviews will be preserved as a collection of indexed audio and video tapes, housed in the in the National Death Penalty Archives (NDPA), at the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives in the University at Albany's New Science Library. Transcripts which have been read and approved by AOHP subjects will accompany the actual taped interviews in the library. Such a compilation will be useful to all those seeking information on the abolitionist movement in America, on social movements in general, on individuals involved in the effort to abolish the death penalty, and on the specific events mentioned in the interviews.
Preparing to do these interviews involves constructing biographical sketches of the abolitionists and their death penalty work. Such reviews necessitate collecting and reading their published works, media articles, and other representations about them as well. The review and analysis of this material will serve as a guide for the interview. However, it also will form the introductory biographical content for the abolitionist's actual oral history in the library. Participants also will be provided an opportunity to donate personal items (e.g., photographs, letters, unpublished writings, notes of meetings and other related documents, etc.) to accompany their oral history contribution.
Capital Jury Project II (CJP2): The Capital Jury Project II (CJP2) is a continuing program of research on the decision-making of capital jurors. The conceptual framework of this research draws on the literature concerning cognitive schema, identification and empathy, the interpersonal dynamics of persuasion in groups, and the interplay of race, gender, and social class. The study builds on recently developed findings of stark difference in the decision-making patterns of black and white jurors from the national Capital Jury Project (CJP). The CPRI is one of several research sites around the country engaged in collecting data for the CJP2 effort.
Its predecessor, the national Capital Jury Project (CJP), was initiated in 1991 by a consortium of university-based researchers with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The Project is administered nationally by Dr. William Bowers, Principal Research Scientist, Northeastern University. The findings of the CJP are based on 3 to 4 hour, in-depth, interviews with persons who have served as jurors in capital trials. Phase I of the Project has completed over 1,200 interviews from jurors in 353 capital trials in 14 states. These interviews chronicled the jurors' experiences and decision-making over the course of the trial, identify points at which various influences come into play, and reveal the ways in which jurors reach their final sentencing decision.
The CJP2 focuses especially on the role of jurors' race in capital sentencing. The CJP2 seeks: (1) to identify race-linked perspectives of crime causation and responsibility that may be associated with different assessments of criminal violence; (2) to examine processes of identification with perpetrators and victims of criminal violence and to assess their relationship to perspectives of crime causation and responsibility, (3) to understand the role of perceptions of crime causation and responsibility, of personal identification, and of empathy with offenders and victims on the evaluation of aggravation and mitigation, (4) to trace the interpersonal dynamics of decision-making, and account for them in terms of jury composition, processes of identification and empathy, and attributions of cause and responsibility, and (5) to uncover the interplay of gender with race in punishment decision-making and to test the independence of race and social economic status effects. See http://www.cjp.neu.edu/ for a complete list of Publications, Doctoral Dissertations, and Selected Court Decisions based on CJP research data.
National Death Penalty Archives (NDPA): One of the original goals of the CPRI was to establish and maintain a collection of archival materials to document the history of capital punishment and preserve resources for historical scholarship. Through collaboration with the University at Albany Library's M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, the CPRI has established the National Death Penalty Archives (NDPA).
The primary task in our effort to build the NDPA is to collect, preserve, and make accessible the records of individuals and organizations working on issues related to capital punishment. We are in the process of building a collection that will serve as a valuable resource for historians, researchers, faculty, students, and interested members of the public. We are especially interested in collecting primary documents, such as letters, reports, unpublished writings, personal papers, organizational records, and related materials that currently reside in the hands of activists, scholars, lawyers, family members, and others whose lives have been touched by the death penalty.
This growing collection of archival materials is housed in the University at Albany's new Science Library. Opened in 1999, this state-of-the-art library building holds the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, which is home to print, manuscript, and archival sources on a wide array of historical topics. The Department's temperature and humidity-controlled storage facility provides over 25,000 cubic feet of shelving space. Under the supervision of library personnel, graduate students inventory, catalog, and safely re-house materials so they are accessible to scholars in the future. For additional information on the NDPA, as well as a description of specific collections, go to http://library.albany.edu/speccoll/ndpa.htm.
Clemency Petitions as a Key to Wrongful Executions: This project involves the acquisition and analysis of clemency petitions and related materials filed in capital cases across America. As a practical matter, clemency petitions are free of procedural defaults that can mask error, unfairness, or irrationality in a given death sentence. The typical petition indicates what the sentencer did not know, for whatever reasons -- usually attorney error, but also prosecutorial misconduct, and/or newly-discovered evidence, among other issues. Such claims may have been procedurally barred, if waived in some way at trial or not properly raised in state habeas. But the facts remain, and clemency is where they usually are reassembled in the most coherent and complete form, with the benefit of all the investigation that was ever done on the case.
The Clemency Project intends to acquire an estimated 600-700 such petitions and associated materials, and complete an analysis that uses this material. In essence, these clemency requests can be viewed as a window on the processing of capital cases, and as a source of uniquely detailed information on the nature of faults previously identified in the administration of the death penalty. Thus, clemency affords a unique vantage point from which to assess the fundamental fairness, accuracy, and reliability of death sentences in the critical cases that usually end in the defendant's execution. In short, clemency petitions in capital cases promise to further illuminate the administration of capital punishment in America.
Planned Research:
A Study of State and Federal Death Rows: This research involves using data culled from official records as well as that collected though various surveys. For example, current plans are to (a) compile and review the regulations governing the death rows around the nation, (b) construct and administer a survey designed for managers of death rows, and (c) conduct a survey of death row conditions around the country. This study is designed to learn whether death rows need to be so confining, or restrictive, and what happens to death row prisoners who eventually are released into the general population.
Surviving Family Members of Homicide: In September 2003, Skidmore College, the University at Albany School of Criminal Justice, and Justice Solutions co-sponsored a conference called "The Impact of the Death Penalty on Victims' Families." A mixture of victims/survivors, victim advocates, researchers, practitioners, and legal professionals attended this forum. In conjunction with the conference, the Tang Teaching Museum at the Skidmore campus in Saratoga Springs, New York, hosted an exhibit based on Howard Zehr's book Transcending: Reflections by Crime Victims.
The death penalty often is imposed as a sentence to provide "justice" for victims, as well as for society as a whole. The concept of "closure" is frequently cited as an expected outcome for surviving family members of victims in death penalty cases. Recently, however, questions have been raised about this assumption. No systematic research has been conducted on this important subject, and victims often express concerns that researchers and others fail to understand their perspective. Thus this conference brought together a diverse group of interested persons and stakeholders in an effort to begin to understand this subject.
One concrete result of this initiative is a book titled Wounds That Do Not Bind: Victim-Based Perspectives on the Death Penalty. Professor James Acker, of the University at Albany School of Criminal Justice, and Professor David Karp, of the Skidmore College Sociology Department will edit the book; surviving family members, scholars, victim advocates, professors and graduate students will contribute chapters. This book will examine two distinctive forms of lethality-criminal homicide and capital punishment-and their interrelated effects on co-victims, who have suffered the murder of a family member. The book will be published by Carolina Academic Press, and is slated for completion in early 2005. A second initiative involves the systemic study of the experiences of homicide victims' surviving family members, including the elusive concept of closure.
In Progress:
CPRI on the Web: The CPRI web site currently is being conceptualized and constructed by volunteers. When completed, it will include a more expansive mission statement and history of the Capital Punishment Research Initiative. It also will detail the extensive collaborations that exist with other scholars and universities from around the nation. The online presence of the CPRI will focus on being a resource for the acquisition and dissemination of reliable and usable scholarly information about the ultimate penal sanction.
Uniquely, the CPRI site will provide a platform where scholars from around the world can list their research efforts. Using a "template" designed specifically for this site, researchers can detail the nature and scope of their research undertaking, including their contact information, and papers and/or publications resulting from their work. This information will be gathered and entered into a searchable data base (e.g., by using "keywords" like name of author, date, topic, publication) that can be accessed online.
The site also will host Annotated Bibliographies of extant Social Science Research, Law Reviews, Books, and Monographs (including relevant reports from governmental and non-governmental agencies). All decisions from the United States Supreme Court involving death penalty cases also will be listed and their holdings described in a usable format. Project details and news regarding all of the various CPRI projects also will be included online. The web site also will include a wide array of useful links, as well as a calendar of noteworthy events related to capital punishment and/or the work of the CPRI.
Journal of Death Penalty Research and Jurisprudence: The CPRI has contemplated whether a peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of the death penalty might make a worthwhile contribution to the field. Each year, upwards of 200 articles and reports are published in a wide variety of scholarly journals, law reviews, monographs, and other publications. A large number of legal decisions from courts in the various state and Federal death penalty jurisdictions are issued each year; numerous books on capital punishment are added to the literature each year as well.
Discussion and analysis regarding the death penalty in America thus might be better served if these resources can be brought into focus in a periodical devoted exclusively to the topic. With such a wide array of venues in which to find publications on the death penalty, scholars might find it useful to possess a single source of information devoted to capital punishment. Such a venture certainly is in keeping with the rationale of the CPRI, which is to make research information readily accessible.
Funding initiatives: The CPRI has received several discretionary grants since its inception from the Bernard F. and Alva B. Gimbel Foundation, in New York City. These funds have allowed the CPRI to begin work in a variety of areas, and to establish itself as a unique and accomplished entity. However, additional funding is essential for the CPRI to remain in existence, and to further realize its potential as one of the nation's leading sources of research and public education on the death penalty.
Accordingly, the Capital Punishment Research Initiative actively seeks funds from any source - public or private, agency or individual, governmental or non-governmental - in an effort to maintain its viability within the university setting. Any type of inquiry, as well as suggestions regarding possible funding sources, can be made by contacting us at:
Capital Punishment Research Initiative (CPRI)
518-442-5231 (office)
Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Center
Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Center
University at Albany, SUNY
135 Western Avenue, DR-241
Albany, NY 12222
518-442-5603 (fax)
cpri@albany.edu (e-mail)
Send comments or questions to: hindlang@cnsunix.albany.edu
Revised January 3, 2005