Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

DOC…

Against a back­drop of high-pro­­­file inno­cence cas­es and the U.S. Supreme Court’s seem­ing indif­fer­ence to them, the 2023 Gallup poll found that more Americans now believe that the death penal­ty is admin­is­tered unfair­ly than fair­ly. Use of the death penal­ty remained geo­graph­i­cal­ly iso­lat­ed, with only five states car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions and only sev­en impos­ing death sen­tences. For the ninth con­sec­u­tive year, few­er than 30 peo­ple were exe­cut­ed and fewer…

Tomorrow, the Death Penalty Information Center will release a report that doc­u­ments how racial bias and vio­lence affect­ed the past use of the death penal­ty in Missouri and how that his­to­ry con­tin­ues to influ­ence the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state. Compromised Justice: How A Legacy of Racial Violence Informs Missouri’s Death Penalty Today, sched­uled for release on December 1, 2023, notes that…

Andy…

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Sandra Babcock (pic­tured), Clinical Professor at Cornell Law School, Faculty Director, and founder of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. Ms. Babcock’s clin­ic cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents death sen­tenced women in the United States, Malawi, and Tanzania and is focused on pro­vid­ing defense teams in reten­tion­ist coun­tries with train­ing and con­sul­ta­tion in order to provide…

U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released its lat­est report for the year 2021, con­firm­ing a con­tin­ued decrease in the num­ber of peo­ple on death rows in the…

On November 13, 2023, offi­cials announced that the U.S. Army had over­turned the con­vic­tions of 110 Black sol­diers of the 3^rd Battalion, 24^th Infantry Regiment, who were charged with mutiny in con­nec­tion with the racial vio­lence that occurred dur­ing the 1917 Camp Logan rebel­lion. Nineteen Black sol­diers were hanged fol­low­ing the court-mar­­­tial rul­ing on December 11, 1917, which was the largest exe­cu­tion of mil­i­tary sol­diers in his­to­ry. In her state­ment, Secretary of the…

Victims’ fam­i­lies, retired Judge James Brogan, and for­mer Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Director Gary Mohr have pub­licly expressed sup­port for leg­is­la­tion pend­ing in both the state Senate and House that would abol­ish the death…

A death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­er whose appeal was lost for thir­ty years was resen­tenced to life with parole on November 14, 2023, when the Harris County, Texas District Attorney’s office said it is no longer pur­su­ing the death penal­ty. Syed Rabbani, a Bangladeshi nation­al, has been on death row since 1988 for a fatal Houston shoot­ing. Mr. Rabbani filed his appeal in 1994, but it remained pend­ing in the Harris County Court sys­tem until 2022, when the Harris County District Clerk’s Office…

A recent arti­cle in the Post and Courier details research into the rea­sons why 18 death sen­tences have been over­turned in South Carolina, find­ing one of the main rea­sons to be pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. Research found that 11 of the 18 pris­on­ers received new sen­tences because of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, while the oth­er sev­en received new sen­tences after the deci­sion in Atkins v. Virginia because they had intellectual…