Entries by Anne Holsinger

As voters across the United States cast their ballots on election day, the Death Penalty Information Center’s July 2024 report, Lethal Election: How the U.S. Electoral Process Increases the Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty, provides valuable context on the intersection of politics and the death penalty. While all eyes are on the race for U.S. President, it is local races for prosecutor, state judge, legislator, and governor that will decide whether and how the death penalty is used. The…

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. This post highlights José Garza, District Attorney of Travis County, Texas. José Garza, a former public defender, took office as Travis County District Attorney in 2021, after running on a platform of criminal justice reform, including a pledge not to seek the death penalty. On his campaign website in 2020, he…

On August 4, a South Korean national convicted of drug-trafficking was executed in China, according to South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who added during a press conference that this execution was “unrelated to the current bilateral relations” between the two nations. This was the first time a South Korean national was executed in China for drug-trafficking since 2014, when four were executed. Indonesia On August 8, the Supreme Court commuted the death sentence of Fredy Sambo, a…