Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The Florida Supreme Court issued rul­ings in thir­teen death penal­ty cas­es in the last two weeks of 2018, uphold­ing con­vic­tions and death sen­tences in ten, revers­ing one death sen­tence, remand­ing one case for a new hear­ing on intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, and allow­ing lim­it­ed DNA test­ing in anoth­er case. The most notable of the deci­sions came in the cas­es of Gerald Murray (pic­tured left) and Steven Taylor (pic­tured, right), decid­ed on December 20,…

2018 was a record-low year for death-penal­­ty usage in the United States, as eigh­teen death-penal­­ty states set or matched records for the fewest new death sen­tences imposed in the mod­ern his­to­ry of U.S. cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. (Click here to enlarge map.) Thirty-five U.S. states — includ­ing six­teen that autho­rized cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 2018 — did not impose any death sen­tences in 2018, while California and Pennsylvania, which col­lec­tive­ly account for…

The R Street Institute, a Washington-based pol­i­cy think tank, has joined the grow­ing num­ber of con­ser­v­a­tive voic­es advo­cat­ing for death-penal­­ty abo­li­tion. In a com­men­tary in the November/​December 2018 issue of The American Conservative, the institute’s crim­i­nal jus­tice and civ­il lib­er­ties pol­i­cy direc­tor Arthur Rizer (pic­tured, left) and its Southeast region direc­tor Marc Hyden (pic­tured, right) argue that ​“the…

Empowered by the results of the November 2018 mid-term elec­tions, leg­is­la­tures in at least four states are poised to renew efforts to repeal their states’ death-penal­­ty statutes or dras­ti­cal­ly reduce the cir­cum­stances in which cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is avail­able. State leg­isla­tive and guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tions in Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Oregon…

Death-row exoneree Ron Keine (pic­tured) reflects on spend­ing the hol­i­days on death…

In the lat­est pod­cast episode of Discussions with DPIC, mem­bers of the DPIC staff dis­cuss key themes from the 2018 Year End Report. Robert Dunham, Ngozi Ndulue, and Anne Holsinger delve into the major death-penal­­ty trends and news items of the year, including the ​“extend­ed trend” of gen­er­a­tional lows in death sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tions, elec­tion results that indi­cate the decline will like­ly con­tin­ue, and the pos­si­ble impact of Pope Francis’s change to Catholic…

Florida courts have refused death-row pris­on­ers access to DNA test­ing sev­en­ty times, deny­ing 19 men – eight of whom have been exe­cut­ed – any test­ing at all and pre­vent­ing nine oth­ers from obtain­ing test­ing of addi­tion­al evi­dence or more advanced DNA test­ing after ini­tial tests were incon­clu­sive. For a six-part inves­tiga­tive series, Blood and truth: The lin­ger­ing case of Tommy Zeigler and how Florida fights DNA test­ing, Tampa Bay Times Pulitzer-prize winning…

In March 2018, Alabama enact­ed a new law autho­riz­ing the use of nitro­gen gas as an alter­na­tive method of exe­cu­tion. Although lethal injec­tion remained the pri­ma­ry method of exe­cu­tion, the law pro­vid­ed con­demned pris­on­ers a lim­it­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty to des­ig­nate nitro­gen asphyx­i­a­tion (hypox­ia) as the means of their death. The avail­abil­i­ty of exe­cu­tion by nitro­gen gas led to a July 2018 set­tle­ment of a fed­er­al law­suit Alabama’s death-row pris­on­ers had filed that had…

With the sup­port of a record 120 nations, the United Nations General Assembly adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion on December 17, 2018 call­ing for a world­wide mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty. The resolution expressed ​“deep con­cern” over the use of the death penal­ty and urged those coun­tries that con­tin­ue to use it to take action to ensure that death sen­tences are not the prod­uct of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry or arbi­trary laws or prac­tices. The mora­to­ri­um res­o­lu­tion, pro­posed this year by Brazil and…

Six for­mer gov­er­nors have urged California Governor Jerry Brown (pic­tured) to ​“be coura­geous in lead­er­ship” and grant clemen­cy to the 740 men and women on California’s death row before he leaves office on January 7, 2019. In a December 13 op-ed in the New York Times, the for­mer gov­er­nors — Ohio’s Richard Celeste, Oregon’s John Kitzhaber, Maryland’s Martin O’Malley, New Mexico’s Bill Richardson and Toney Anaya, and Illinois’s Pat Quinn — wrote that ​“Mr. Brown has the…