Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

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…

In this month’s pod­cast episode of 12:01 The Death Penalty in Context, DPI​’s Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Sam Levin, a cor­re­spon­dent with The Guardian who cov­ers crim­i­nal jus­tice and the legal sys­tem, and Jimmy Jenkins, a crim­i­nal jus­tice reporter for The Arizona Republic, about the chal­lenges they encounter when report­ing on the increas­ing secre­tive use of the death penal­ty. Mr. Jenkins has wit­nessed exe­cu­tions in Arizona and Mr. Levin has recently…

The death penal­ty in the Unites States is expe­ri­enc­ing what schol­ars call a​“slow death.” In their forth­com­ing book,​“The Slow Death of the Death Penalty: Toward a Postmortem,” edi­tors Todd C. Peppers, Jamie Almallen, and Mary Welek Atwell bring togeth­er death penal­ty experts to exam­ine this shift in the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. New death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions still occur in a lim­it­ed num­ber of states; but Peppers et al reflect on the broad­er trends away from use…