Jun 14, 2019
The Death Penalty Information Center has modernized and expanded its award-winning website. On June 14, 2019, DPIC launched its redesigned website, culminating a two-year project that involved the transfer and reorganization of in…
Read MoreArbitrariness
Jul 23, 2019
A divided Missouri Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the state’s death-penalty statute against a challenge to its requirement that the trial judge decide a capital defendant’s sentence in cases of a penalty-phase hung jury. In a 4-…
Federal Death Penalty
Jul 22, 2019
In a highly publicized death-penalty trial, Brendt Christensen (pictured) was sentenced to life in prison without parole on July 18, 2019 for the rape and murder of Chinese graduate student Yingying Zhang when a federal jury in Peoria, Illinois di…
Arbitrariness
Jul 19, 2019
Calling Governor Gavin Newsom’s moratorium on executions a “paradigm shift” in the death-penalty landscape, a defendant facing the death penalty in
Arbitrariness
Jul 18, 2019
Citing race disparities, ineffective representation by court-appointed lawyers, and arbitrary case outcomes, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to strike down the …
Intellectual Disability
Jul 17, 2019
Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who described his deciding vote to uphold the constitutionality of capital punishment in 1976 as the one court vote he most regretted, has died. He was 99 years old. A
Conditions on Death Row
Jul 16, 2019
Amidst an ongoing lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of South Carolina’s death-row conditions, the state has moved its death-row prisoners to a different prison. On July 11, 2019, the South Carolina Department of Correction…
Arbitrariness
Jul 15, 2019
Rick Unklesbay served as a prosecutor in the Pima County Attorney’s Office in …
Jul 15, 2019
NEWS: July 19 — The Nebraska Supreme Court has upheld the convictions and death sentences in the case of Nikko Jenkins, who was c…
Representation
Jul 12, 2019
In the span of two weeks, juries in four unrelated cases in which Florida prosecutors had sought the death penalty have instead returned life sentences. The cases — which were considered probable death verdicts if judges were permit…
Sentencing Data
Jul 11, 2019
The American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section will soon release its annual report on issues, trends, and significant changes in America’s criminal justice system. The new publication, The State of Criminal Justice 20…
