Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

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…

From September 14 – 28, 2025, the San Francisco Opera will present a spe­cial 25^th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion of the opera Dead Man Walking, which pre­miered in 2000. The opera, com­posed by San Francisco-based Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally, is based on Sister Helen Prejean’s jour­ney as a pen pal and spir­i­tu­al advi­sor to a death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­er at Louisiana’s Angola State Prison. Originally com­mis­sioned by San Francisco Opera, Dead Man Walking has been per­formed more than…

In​“Gendered Capital Punishment,” Cornell Law School Clinical Professor Sandra Babcock exam­ines how the gen­der of actors in cap­i­tal cas­es affects out­comes for women defen­dants. Professor Babcock’s research doc­u­ments that 96% of women cur­rent­ly sen­tenced to death in the US were pros­e­cut­ed by male pros­e­cu­tors, 89% appeared before male judges, and more than one-third had exclu­sive­ly male deci­­­sion-mak­ers through­out their cas­es. These sta­tis­tics are rel­e­vant, says…

In an August 14, 2025, op-ed in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, for­mer Alabama Governor Don Siegelman revealed he has​“lived to regret” not com­mut­ing death sen­tences while he was in office, and crit­i­cized Florida’s exe­cu­tion selec­tion process, cit­ing seri­ous con­cerns with secre­cy and racial bias. Writing about two sched­uled exe­cu­tions in Florida — Kayle Bates on August 19 and Curtis Windom on August 28 — Gov. Siegelman argues the cas­es sur­face sys­temic problems in…