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