Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

New death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions were at his­toric lows in the first half of 2020, the Death Penalty Information Center report­ed in its 2020 Mid-Year Review. The report, released July 2, attrib­uted the record-low num­bers to the com­bined effects of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and a con­tin­u­ing broad nation­al decline in the use of…

Four California death-row pris­on­ers are dead and more than 210 have been infect­ed in a coro­n­avirus out­break that news reports say is​“tear­ing through” the nation’s…

In the June 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Henderson Hill (pic­tured), Senior Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union Capital Punishment Project, speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about North Carolina​’s Racial Justice Act. Hill, who has spent decades as a pub­lic defend­er, cap­i­tal defense attor­ney, and civ­il rights advo­cate, is cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ing North Carolina death-row…

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a chal­lenge to the fed­er­al exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, remov­ing a poten­tial major obsta­cle to the Department of Justice​’s (DOJ) plan to resume fed­er­al exe­cu­tions after a 17-year hia­tus. The deci­sion leaves in place an April 2020 rul­ing by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that lift­ed an injunc­tion that had halt­ed fed­er­al exe­cu­tions. The Department has sched­uled four executions in…

“States still oper­at­ing a cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem are inca­pable of admin­is­ter­ing the death penal­ty free from racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and arbi­trari­ness.” So argues Alexis Hoag (pic­tured), Practitioner in Residence at the Eric H. Holder Jr. Initiative for Civil and Political Rights at Columbia University, in an arti­cle in the Spring 2020 issue of the Columbia Human…

A group of 15 admin­is­tra­tive law experts have filed an ami­cus curi­ae brief in sup­port of death-row pris­on­ers seek­ing U.S. Supreme Court review of a chal­lenge to the fed­er­al government’s pro­posed exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. The brief was filed June 19, 2020 in Roane v. Barr, a case brought by fed­er­al death-row pris­on­ers ask­ing the Court to over­turn an appel­late court’s rul­ing that lift­ed an injunc­tion on fed­er­al exe­cu­tions. According to the…

The per­cent­age of Americans who con­sid­er the death penal­ty to be moral­ly accept­able has fall­en to a record-low, a new nation­al poll by the Gallup…

Three pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tions and eight prac­ti­tion­ers in the fields of neu­ro­science and neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy have joined a Texas death-row pris­on­er in chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s use of​“future dan­ger­ous­ness” find­ings to impose the death penal­ty on defen­dants who were younger than age 21 at the time of their offense. Their brief, filed in the U.S. Supreme Court on June 19, 2020, argues based on “[t]he great weight of scientific evidence”…

At least 1,300 pris­on­ers have been impris­oned on U.S. death rows for more than two decades, in vio­la­tion of U.S. human rights oblig­a­tions, a Death Penalty Information Center report on death-row incar­cer­a­tion prac­tices has found. The num­ber rep­re­sents more than half of all U.S. death-row pris­on­ers as of January 1, 2020. Nearly one third of the pris­on­ers whose lengthy death-row incar­cer­a­tions vio­late their human rights are on death row…

As high-pro­­­file sup­port mounts in the cam­paign for clemen­cy for death-row pris­on­er Julius Jones (pic­tured), the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board has turned to the pros­e­cu­tors who are seek­ing his exe­cu­tion — the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office — for advice on whether it can con­sid­er his peti­tion at all. The ques­tion fac­ing the board is whether Oklahoma law per­mits it to con­duct clemen­cy pro­ceed­ings for a death-row pris­on­er who does…