Deborah Denno was quoted in USA today regarding Arkansas’s short-lived halt on execution of eight prisoners.
Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham University School of Law, said the use of DNA evidence has led to closer scrutiny of death penalty cases by both the legal system and the general public.
“We’ve seen a precipitous decline since 1999 and probably a lot of that had to do with these innocence cases,” she said. “Attorneys were starting to introduce DNA into court, and you had these cases showing that people were innocent.”
Although lethal injection became the nation’s primary method of execution in the 1990s, Denno said it is only in recent years that sustained challenges by death row inmates and death penalty opponents have gained traction in the court system.