Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Florida’s recent deci­sion to allow death sen­tences with­out a unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tion increas­es the risk of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son, accord­ing to con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor Christian Schneider (pic­tured). In a May 25, 2023 col­umn for The National Review, Schneider argues that con­ser­v­a­tives should oppose the law that allows a death sen­tence to be imposed when only eight jurors…

In the lat­est episode of Discussions with DPIC, Anne Holsinger, Managing Director of DPIC, inter­views Dr. Sally Satel (pic­tured), a psy­chi­a­trist and senior fel­low at the American Enterprise Institute. She shares her insights on the role of severe men­tal ill­ness in death…

On May 25, 2023, 12 death-qual­i­­­fied jurors and six alter­nates were select­ed in the fed­er­al cap­i­tal tri­al of Robert Bowers, who is charged with killing 11 wor­ship­pers at a Pittsburgh syn­a­gogue in 2018. Prosecutors struck all the Black, Hispanic, and Jewish venire mem­bers. As tes­ti­mo­ny begins on May 30, some vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers have expressed sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, while others…

“[W]e have come over time to see the flaws in our nation’s jus­tice sys­tem and to view the state’s death penal­ty laws in par­tic­u­lar as legal­ly and moral­ly trou­bling,” wrote two for­mer gov­er­nors of Alabama in an op-ed for the Washington Post. Republican Robert Bentley (pic­tured, right) and Democrat Don Siegelman (pic­tured, left) agree that the 146 peo­ple whose death sen­tences were imposed by non-unan­i­­­mous juries or judi­cial over­ride should have their sentences…

Former fed­er­al Oklahoma pros­e­cu­tors Patrick Ryan and Daniel Webber co-authored an edi­to­r­i­al in The Oklahoman on May 17, 2023 express­ing seri­ous con­cerns about Richard Glossip’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. The writ­ers not­ed that a prosecutor’s duty​“is not to win a case, but to ensure jus­tice is done,” and con­clud­ed that​“the state did not fol­low these fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples in obtain­ing Richard Glossip’s 1998 and 2004 con­vic­tions and death sen­tences.” The…

A May 20, 2023 edi­to­r­i­al in a lead­ing med­ical aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nal con­cludes that physi­cian par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­tions​“goes against the eth­i­cal foun­da­tion of the physi­cian’s role” and argues that doc­tors and med­ical asso­ci­a­tions should oppose…

The num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death or fac­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a death sen­tence in pend­ing cap­i­tal retri­al or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings con­tin­ued its more than two-decade decline in the third quar­ter of last year, accord­ing to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) Summer 2022 quar­ter­ly cen­sus of death rows across the…

UPDATE 2: On June 2, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit lift­ed the stay that had been imposed by the U.S. District Court, say­ing that the low­er court did not have jurisdiction to…

Robert Roberson with daugh­ter Nikki. Courtesy of the…

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…