Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

On May 11, attor­neys for Robert Roberson, a death-sen­­tenced pris­on­er in Texas, filed a peti­tion for cer­tio­rari to the Supreme Court ask­ing it to reverse the deci­sion of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA). Mr. Roberson’s con­vic­tion for the mur­der of his daugh­ter Nikki was based on the so-called ​“Shaken Baby Syndrome” which has now been debunked by new sci­en­tif­ic and med­ical evi­dence. The TCCA dis­re­gard­ed this and oth­er evi­dence that showed his daughter’s death was attributable to…

Over a decade ago, four audio tapes and hun­dreds of exe­cu­tion doc­u­ments were donat­ed to the Library of the University of Virginia by a for­mer Virginia cor­rec­tion­al employ­ee. National Public Radio (NPR) aired excerpts from those long-hid­­den tapes in January 2023. Shortly there­after, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) then request­ed the return of all the mate­ri­als. NPR now reports that only two of the six box­es of mate­r­i­al remain avail­able for view­ing at the…

The Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to announce that Robin M. Maher has joined the orga­ni­za­tion as Executive Director, effec­tive May 15, 2023. Most recent­ly, Ms. Maher was Senior Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Access to Justice. Ms. Maher pre­vi­ous­ly worked in the fed­er­al defend­er sys­tem and at the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and has more than twen­ty years’ expe­ri­ence train­ing lawyers and judges in the United States and around the world. She was…

Occasionally, DPIC dis­cov­ers an old­er case involv­ing an exon­er­a­tion from death row and adds that case to the DPIC Innocence List. Joe Cota Morales was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Arizona in 1976 and was exon­er­at­ed in 1981. He has now been added to the Innocence List, bring­ing the total num­ber of death-row exonerations to…

On May 9, 2023, the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee held its first hear­ing on Senate Bill 101 that would abol­ish the state’s death penal­ty. The co-spon­­sors of the bill, Senate Democratic Leader Nickie Antonio (D‑Lakewood) and Senator Stephen Huffman (R‑Tipp City), argued in favor of the bill’s pas­sage and not­ed that more than one-third of Ohio’s sen­a­tors have signed on as…

DPIC​’s High School Curriculum on the Death Penalty, which was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed in coop­er­a­tion with Michigan State University’s Communications Technology Laboratory in 2001, has been updat­ed and inte­grat­ed into DPIC​’s main web­site. This resource cov­ers death penal­ty his­to­ry, legal pro­ce­dures, argu­ments for and against cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, and nar­ra­tives of real capital…

In an arti­cle for the University of Oxford Death Penalty Research Unit, Professor John Bessler dis­cuss­es whether the use of the death penal­ty should be clas­si­fied as tor­ture under the norms of inter­na­tion­al law. Bessler argues that since psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ture is pro­hib­it­ed under the most fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of inter­na­tion­al law (jus cogens norms) and since death threats are a form of psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ture, then gov­ern­men­tal death threats as part of the death penal­ty are torturous…

On May 3, 2023, the fam­i­ly of Joe Nathan James (pic­tured) sued the state of Alabama for the pain and suf­fer­ing it caused dur­ing his three-hour-long lethal injec­tion in 2022. It is believed to be the longest known exe­cu­tion in U.S. his­to­ry. The suit asserts that ​“the exe­cu­tion team failed to exe­cute Mr. James in a man­ner that com­ports with the U.S. Constitution, the Alabama Constitution, and applicable state…

On May 1, 2023, the state of Florida adopt­ed leg­is­la­tion allow­ing the death penal­ty for sex­u­al abuse of a child where no death occurred. This statute is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under the U.S. Supreme Court’s rul­ing in Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008). Excerpts from that opin­ion and from an ami­cus brief cit­ed by the Court…

A recent arti­cle in the The Guardian described the reac­tions of some of the California pris­on­ers who have been moved from San Quentin’s death row and trans­ferred to oth­er facil­i­ties around the state. The pris­on­ers are still under a sen­tence of death, but in 2019 Governor Gavin Newsom declared a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions and has dis­man­tled the execution…