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:

“Another 10 exe­cu­tions are sched­uled for this year, accord­ing to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI). While this year’s ele­vat­ed num­ber has made head­lines, exe­cu­tions are a ​‘lag­ging indi­ca­tor’ of where the pub­lic stands on the issue, said Robin Maher, DPI exec­u­tive direc­tor. ​‘They rep­re­sent lev­els of sup­port that are usu­al­ly decades out of date.’” 

— Joshua Barajas, PBS News, July 2025

“In 2024, only five men were exe­cut­ed in [Texas], mark­ing the sixth con­sec­u­tive year with few­er than 10 exe­cu­tions, as Robin Maher, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Death Penalty Information Center, point­ed out the nar­ra­tive has shift­ed from a nation­al to a local focus.”

— Sophie Leclerc, Hoodline, February 2025

“The Death Penalty Information Center gets it right when it says that Trump, as well as offi­cials through­out the death belt, ​‘are large­ly out of step with increas­ing pub­lic con­cern about the fair­ness and accu­ra­cy of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment — and that zeal­ous approach­es to using the death penal­ty that were once pop­u­lar are no longer win­ning the same lev­els of voter support.’”

— Austin Sarat, Verdict, October 2024

“The death penal­ty has been falling out of favor with offi­cials and the broad­er pub­lic alike over the past three decades, in part owing to what the Death Penalty Information Center called ​‘soci­ety’s great­est under­stand­ing about the fal­li­bil­i­ty of our legal sys­tem and its inabil­i­ty to pro­tect inno­cent peo­ple from execution.”

— The New York Times, July 2024

“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

“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