Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In an order dat­ed September 30, 2025, the Tennessee Supreme Court set an exe­cu­tion date for Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row. If her exe­cu­tion pro­ceeds as sched­uled on September 30, 2026, Ms. Pike will be the first woman exe­cut­ed in the state in more than 200 years and the only per­son exe­cut­ed in Tennessee for a crime com­mit­ted at age 18, 19 or 20 in the mod­ern death penalty era. > ​“Life impris­on­ment is a prop­er pun­ish­ment for Christa, just as it…

The cap­i­tal charges filed against Tyler Robinson, the man accused of killing con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal activist Charlie Kirk on September 10^th, have drawn new atten­tion to Utah’s death penal­ty. Although Utah was among the first states to rein­state the death penal­ty after it was inval­i­dat­ed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, and the first to per­form an exe­cu­tion in the mod­ern era, exe­cu­tions have been rare over the last 50 years. Just eight peo­ple have been executed in…

In an op-ed for The Black Chronicle, Demetrius Minor (pic­tured), exec­u­tive direc­tor of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, argues that an uptick in exe­cu­tions in 2025​“represent[s] the past more than the present as a rem­nant of our nation’s for­mer affin­i­ty for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” Mr. Minor’s opin­ion finds sup­port in DPI​’s recent mid year review, which notes that new death sen­tences in July were low­er than they were at the same time in 2024. The better…

This week we are fea­tur­ing some arti­cles from the first part of 2025 that we think are worth anoth­er look. We’ll be back with new arti­cles next week. This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly post­ed on April 30, 2025. In com­mem­o­ra­tion of the 20^th anniver­sary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s land­mark deci­sion end­ing the juve­nile death penal­ty, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) today released a new report: Immature Minds in a​“Maturing Society”: Roper v. Simmons at 20, detail­ing…

In the August 2025 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Melanie Kalmanson, a Florida attor­ney and author of the Substack newslet­ter Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty. Ms. Kalmanson’s newslet­ter com­piles data on leg­is­la­tion, cap­i­tal tri­als, death sen­tences, and exe­cu­tions in Florida. In the pod­cast, she dis­cuss­es how she start­ed fol­low­ing those devel­op­ments, key events in the recent his­to­ry of Florida’s…

A new report from the ACLU doc­u­ments how the process of select­ing juries for death penal­ty cas­es sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly excludes Black prospec­tive jurors, women, and peo­ple of faith, fun­da­men­tal­ly under­min­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al promise of a tri­al by a jury of one’s peers. The report, Fatal Flaws: Revealing the Racial and Religious Gerrymandering of the Capital Jury, exam­ines the prac­tice of​“death qual­i­fi­ca­tion,” a require­ment that poten­tial jurors must be…