DPI in the Media

For three decades, DPI has served the media with analy­sis and infor­ma­tion on issues con­cern­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The Center’s reports and press releas­es are wide­ly quot­ed and con­sult­ed by reporters in the United States and around the globe. The fol­low­ing is a sam­ple of some our most notable recent media cov­er­age:
 

“DPIC’s [Robin] Maher said the chang­ing atti­tudes toward the death penal­ty also extend to con­ser­v­a­tive law­mak­ers and elect­ed offi­cials who, in recent years, have expressed ​“an unprece­dent­ed show of sup­port for death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers” mov­ing some to ​‘oppose use of the death penal­ty in their state.’ ”

— Vanessa Romo, NPR, December 2023

[2023] ​“marked the low­est num­ber of states that car­ried out an exe­cu­tion and imposed new death sen­tences in two decades, accord­ing to a new [DPI] report pub­lished Friday that ana­lyzes the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty across the U.S., leav­ing some crim­i­nal jus­tice experts to ques­tion the val­ue of the centuries-old practice.”

— Marquise Francis, Yahoo News, December 2023

“A recent report from the non-par­ti­san Death Penalty Information Center sheds light on the his­to­ry we need to learn about Tennessee’s death penal­ty. The report traces the lega­cy of lynch­ings and racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in Tennessee and shows that uneven jus­tice con­tin­ues to dele­git­imize the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem in the present day.”

— Demetrius Minor and Davis Turner, The Tennessean, November 2023

“A new report released by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) has dubbed 2022 the ​“Year of the Botched Execution,” shed­ding light on crit­i­cal issues that mire the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment process in the US — includ­ing racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and prob­lems with prosecutorial accountability.”

— Elizabeth Haigh, Jurist, April 2023

“In one of the most com­pre­hen­sive annu­al exam­i­na­tions of the death penal­ty in the United States, the Death Penalty Information Center found that the num­ber of exe­cu­tions this year, 18, remained sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than even a decade ago, when more than twice as many death row pris­on­ers were killed.”

— Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, New York Times, December 2022

“The flur­ry of exe­cu­tions giv­en the green light by DeSantis is high­light­ed in the annu­al review of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment released on Friday by the author­i­ta­tive Death Penalty Information Center (DPI). The report points to a sharp dichoto­my that while the ulti­mate pun­ish­ment is gen­er­al­ly on the wane in the US – this year was the ninth in a row when few­er than 30 pris­on­ers were put to death – there is ris­ing con­cern about the vis­cer­al unfair­ness of the practice.”

— Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, December 2022

“Capital pun­ish­ment is wan­ing in the U.S. with exe­cu­tions, death sen­tences and pub­lic sup­port hit­ting his­toric lows in 2021. But racial inequities per­sist as Black men made up the major­i­ty of those put to death, accord­ing to an annu­al report by the Death Penalty Information Center.”

— Cameron Langford, Courthouse News Service, December 2021

“The report from the Death Penalty Information Center is a his­to­ry les­son in how lynch­ings and exe­cu­tions have been used in America and how dis­crim­i­na­tion bleeds into the entire crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. It traces a line from lynch­ings of old — killings out­side the law — where Black peo­ple were killed in an effort to assert social con­trol dur­ing slav­ery and Jim Crow, and how that even­tu­al­ly trans­lat­ed into state-ordered executions.”

— Colleen Long, Associated Press, September 2020

“With these exe­cu­tions, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has joined the small minor­i­ty of juris­dic­tions that con­duct exe­cu­tions and the even small­er num­ber of juris­dic­tions that are will­ing to pur­sue them in the midst of the worst glob­al pan­dem­ic in gen­er­a­tions,” the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks death penal­ty poli­cies and their appli­ca­tion across the coun­try, found. ​“The resump­tion of exe­cu­tions along with the government’s dis­re­gard for pro­ce­dur­al pro­tec­tions and estab­lished norms firm­ly place it in the ​‘out­lier’ cat­e­go­ry at a time when sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is at a historic low.”

— Editorial Board, Washington Post, August 2020

The 2019 annu­al report of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) paints a pic­ture of US cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment with­er­ing on the vine yet con­tin­u­ing to dis­play shock­ing flaws and injus­tices. In total, 22 pris­on­ers were killed by just sev­en states this year – a dra­mat­ic decline from the peak of 98 exe­cu­tions in 1999 and the low­est num­ber since 20 were put to death three years ago.

— Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, December 2019