Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

DPI​’s​“What to Know” series exam­ines cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from mul­ti­ple angles, one top­ic at a time. Each install­ment pro­vides essen­tial facts and data on spe­cif­ic aspects of the death penal­ty. Why it mat­ters: Deterrence is among the most com­mon­ly cit­ed jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for the death penal­ty, yet decades of research have failed to pro­duce cred­i­ble evi­dence that use of the death penal­ty has an impact on homi­cide rates. ### Key Facts: — 88% of the nation’s…

Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., a Baptist min­is­ter, two-time pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, and out­spo­ken crit­ic of the death penal­ty, died on February 17, 2026, at age 84. His fam­i­ly announced that he died peace­ful­ly, sur­round­ed by his loved ones. Rev. Jackson had been liv­ing with Parkinson’s dis­ease since his diag­no­sis in 2015. Rev. Jackson brought sus­tained pub­lic atten­tion to the death penal­ty across sev­er­al decades, argu­ing its use was insep­a­ra­ble from questions of…

On November 13, 2025, just hours before Tremane Wood was sched­uled for exe­cu­tion, Governor Kevin Stitt accept­ed the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board and reduced Mr. Wood’s sen­tence to life with­out parole. In a state­ment, Gov. Stitt said,​“This action reflects the same pun­ish­ment his broth­er received for their mur­der of an inno­cent young man and ensures a severe pun­ish­ment that keeps a vio­lent offend­er off the streets for­ev­er. In Oklahoma, we will…

As the United States pre­pares to observe Veterans Day 2025, the Death Penalty Information Center today released a new com­pre­hen­sive report: Forgotten Service, Lasting Wounds: Military Veterans and the Death Penalty. The report reveals that approx­i­mate­ly 200 mil­i­tary vet­er­ans await exe­cu­tion on death rows across the U.S., and one in sev­en exe­cu­tions since 1972 has been a mil­i­tary vet­er­an. Many of the juries that sen­tenced these men and women to death nev­er heard about…

A new report pub­lished on the 40^th anniver­sary of the United Nation’s cre­ation of the​‘abo­li­tion­ist de fac­to’ (ADF) cat­e­go­ry, Between Retention and Abolition: Making Sense of a Death Penalty Without Executions, exam­ines the legal, polit­i­cal, and sym­bol­ic role of the death penal­ty in coun­tries that retain the death penal­ty but have either not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in 10 years or have estab­lished an offi­cial mora­to­ri­um. Authored by researchers at UK-based The…

Edward T. Blake, a foren­sic sci­en­tist who helped pio­neer the use of DNA analy­sis in crim­i­nal cas­es and whose work helped exon­er­ate more than 50 peo­ple, includ­ing those on death row, died in August 2025 at age 80 from pan­cre­at­ic can­cer. Dr. Blake was the first foren­sic sci­en­tist to use poly­merase chain reac­tion test­ing, or PCR, on crime-scene DNA. The tech­nique allowed Dr. Blake to extract usable genet­ic infor­ma­tion from evi­dence sam­ples that could not previously…

Murder vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers hold a wide range of views about what jus­tice means. For some, the death penal­ty holds the promise of clo­sure, while for oth­ers, it is a source of con­tin­ued trau­ma and uncer­tain­ty. In two recent cas­es, vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers have pub­licly expressed their oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty, cit­ing their reli­gious views and need to for­give. Will Berry was just 11 years old when Geoffrey West shot and killed his moth­er, Margaret Parrish…