Joseph Giarratano (pic­tured, cen­ter) died on October 6, 2024. He had spent near­ly forty years in prison, many of them on death row, for a crime he main­tained he did not com­mit. During his time behind bars, he sought to improve prison con­di­tions and secure access to attor­neys. After being paroled in 2017, he worked at the University of Virginia’s Innocence Project, con­tin­u­ing his work to assist incarcerated…

On October 11, 2024 the Embassies of France and Germany host­ed a dis­cus­sion on the ques­tion of inno­cence and the death penal­ty at the res­i­dence of the French Ambassador in Washington, D.C. Panelists includ­ed Herman Lindsey, a death row exoneree and Executive Director of Witness to Innocence; Vanessa Potkin, Director of Special Litigation at the Innocence Project; and Emmjolee Mendoza Waters, Director of the Death Penalty Abolition Program at Catholic Mobilizing Network. The approx­i­mate­ly 75…

In hon­or of Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15), DPI is post­ing a week­ly fea­ture on Hispanic or Latino/​a peo­ple who have had a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the death penal­ty in the U.S. The final entry in this series is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia…

On Friday, October 4, the Supreme Court agreed to hear argu­ments in Gutierrez v. Saenz, a case regard­ing death-sen­tenced Texas pris­on­er Ruben Gutierrez’s abil­i­ty to sue the state for DNA test­ing in sup­port of his inno­cence claim. The Court had issued a stay to Mr. Gutierrez on July 16, just twen­ty min­utes before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion. Mr. Gutierrez was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1999 for the mur­der and rob­bery of an 85-year-old woman but has long main­tained his innocence.

On October 9, 2024, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral argu­ments in Glossip v. Oklahoma, when the Court will con­sid­er mul­ti­ple ques­tions relat­ed to Richard Glossip’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. This is Mr. Glossip’s sec­ond trip to the Supreme Court; the first occurred in 2015 in con­nec­tion with his method of exe­cu­tion chal­lenge. Mr. Glossip has always main­tained his inno­cence of the 1997 ​“mur­der for hire” crime that sent him to death row. In the inter­ven­ing years, he has…