Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

This month, DPIC cel­e­brates Women’s History Month with week­ly pro­files of notable women whose work has been sig­nif­i­cant in the mod­ern death penal­ty era. The sec­ond entry in this series is Sarah Belal, founder and exec­u­tive direc­tor of Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), a non­prof­it organization in…

On Friday, March 8, 2024 a Johnston County tri­al court con­clud­ed a his­toric hear­ing regard­ing the claims of Hasson Bacote, a death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­er in North Carolina, that racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selec­tion played a role in his 2009 cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing. The case, which is being reviewed pur­suant to North Carolina’s 2009 Racial Justice Act (RJA), could have impli­ca­tions for more than 100 oth­er death row pris­on­ers who have pending claims…

Jessie Dotson, a man sen­tenced to death for killing six peo­ple in 2008 in the Binghampton neigh­bor­hood of Memphis, Tennessee, has filed a peti­tion for a writ of a habeas cor­pus ask­ing a judge to vacate his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. His peti­tion alleges that he is inno­cent, that police coerced him to false­ly con­fess, and that a num­ber of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al and defense errors occurred at tri­al. Mr. Dotson has been on death row since 2008, when he was sen­tenced to death…

As more states con­sid­er nitro­gen hypox­ia as an exe­cu­tion method, three of the largest man­u­fac­tur­ers in the U.S. have barred their prod­ucts intend­ed for life-sav­ing mea­sures from use…

In May 1990, Jonathan Eig, then a reporter for The New Orleans Times-Picayune, wit­nessed the elec­tric-chair-exe­cu­­­tion of Dalton Prejean at Angola State Penitentiary for the 1977 mur­der of a Louisiana state troop­er. Mr. Eig watched Mr. Prejean’s exe­cu­tion through an obser­va­tion win­dow, and report­ed see­ing​“his chest heave, his fists clench and his right wrist twist out­ward. A spark and a puff of smoke shot from the elec­trode attached to his left leg.” In the years following…

This month, DPIC cel­e­brates Women’s History Month with week­ly pro­files of notable women whose work was sig­nif­i­cant in the mod­ern death penal­ty era. The first entry in this series is U.S. District Court Judge…

On February 28, 2023, the Oklahoma House Criminal Justice and Corrections Committee unan­i­mous­ly passed a bill that would pause all pend­ing exe­cu­tions and pro­hib­it new death sen­tences while an inde­pen­dent task force reviews cur­rent Oklahoma death penal­ty pro­ce­dures. House Bill 3138, also known as the Death Penalty Moratorium Act, was intro­duced by Republican Representative Kevin McDugle and would cre­ate a five-mem­ber Death Penalty Reform Task Force to​“study and report on…

Thomas Creech and…

This month, DPIC cel­e­brates Black History Month with week­ly pro­files of notable Black Americans whose work affect­ed the mod­ern death penal­ty era. The fourth and final entry in this series is lawyer and civ­il rights activist Elaine Jones, for­mer pres­i­dent and direc­­­tor-coun­sel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and coun­sel of record in Furman v.

A new report from the Texas Defender Service (TDS) titled​“Arbitrary and Capricious: Examining Racial Disparities in Harris County’s Pursuit of Death Sentences” was pub­lished on February 22, 2024 and is the lat­est in series of TDS reports on use of the death penal­ty in Texas. The report focus­es on Harris County’s out­lier death penal­ty prac­tices, both with­in the state and nation­al­ly. While more than half of the 254 coun­ties in Texas have nev­er imposed a death sen­tence, Harris…