Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Elisabeth Semel, Clinical Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley (pic­tured). Professor Semel joined Berkeley Law in 2001 as the first direc­tor of the school’s death penal­ty clin­ic and remains the clinic’s co-direc­­­tor, where stu­dents have rep­re­sent­ed indi­vid­u­als fac­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and writ­ten ami­cus briefs in death penal­ty cas­es before the United…

Damien…

Alameda…

Monique…

A new report issued April 17, 2024 by the UK-based inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tion Reprieve found racial dis­par­i­ties in the occur­rence of botched exe­cu­tions in the United States. As report­ed in The Guardian, Reprieve ana­lyzed all lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions between 1976 and 2023. It chron­i­cled 73 con­firmed botched pro­ce­dures and found that 8% of exe­cu­tions of Black peo­ple were botched (37 times out of 465 exe­cu­tions), com­pared with 4% for white peo­ple (28…

Arizona…

On April 12, 2024, Judge Arturo Nelson signed an Agreed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law sub­mit­ted by the pros­e­cu­tion and defense stat­ing that Melissa Lucio (pic­tured) was not giv­en access to favor­able infor­ma­tion in the prosecution’s pos­ses­sion at the time of tri­al. The acknowl­edge­ment of this con­sti­tu­tion­al error result­ed in Judge Nelson’s rec­om­men­da­tion to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) that Ms. Lucio’s con­vic­tion and death sentence be…

From cen­ter left to right: Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the 1619 project; Wilbert Rideau, for­mer Louisiana death row pris­on­er; CNN reporter and anchor Christiane Amanpour; Carl Bernstein, author and polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor. Photo credit to…

During the April 7, 2024, episode of​“Last Week Tonight,” host John Oliver focused on​“grim devel­op­ments” in the death penal­ty since his last seg­ment cov­er­ing lethal injec­tion in 2019. Since then, 91 peo­ple have been exe­cut­ed, includ­ing 13 fed­er­al pris­on­ers dur­ing for­mer President Donald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion.​“Our fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments have con­tin­ued to pur­sue ques­tion­ably legal and def­i­nite­ly hor­ri­fy­ing ways, that, again, I would argue they…

Melissa…