Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

On January 6, 1959, Richard and Mildred Loving were con­vict­ed on felony charges of ​“mis­ce­gena­tion” under Virginia​’s Racial Integrity Act, which crim­i­nal­ized inter­ra­cial mar­riage. The tri­al court sen­tenced them to one year in prison but sus­pend­ed the sen­tence con­di­tioned upon their leav­ing Virginia and not return­ing togeth­er for 25 years. The court…

A for­mer con­ser­v­a­tive fed­er­al judge and U.S. Solicitor General has called on the United States Supreme Court to vacate a rul­ing by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) that allowed a Texas death sen­tence to stand in the face of an ear­li­er Supreme Court rul­ing that defense coun­sel had unrea­son­ably failed to present a ​“tidal wave” of ​“com­pelling mitigating…

A hos­pice-bound death-row pris­on­er has filed a motion in Idaho state court chal­leng­ing the author­i­ty of Governor Brad Little to reject a par­dons com­mis­sion rec­om­men­da­tion that his death sen­tence be com­mut­ed to life with­out possibility of…

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace lau­re­ate who described himself as ​“pas­sion­ate­ly opposed to the death penal­ty,” died in Cape Town, South Africa on December 26, 2021. He was 90 years…

When Utah County Attorney David Leavitt (pic­tured) announced on September 8, 2021 that his office would no longer pur­sue the death penal­ty, his deci­sion to do so was emblem­at­ic of a broad­er shift in con­ser­v­a­tive think­ing on the death penal­ty. The Republican dis­trict attorney from ​“a deeply con­ser­v­a­tive” coun­ty that gave Donald Trump a 41-per­­cen­t­age-point mar­gin of vic­to­ry in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion joined what the Wall Street Journal describes as ​“a grow­ing…

Fewer peo­ple were on death rows across the United States as of July 1, 2021 or faced con­tin­u­ing jeop­ardy of exe­cu­tion in pend­ing cap­i­tal retri­al or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings than at any oth­er time in more than three decades, accord­ing to data com­piled by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) and ana­lyzed by the Death Penalty Information…

Devonia Inman, sen­tenced to life in a cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al in which Georgia pros­e­cu­tors hid excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence, has been exon­er­at­ed 23 years after his wrongful…

More than half of all U.S. death-row pris­on­ers are or have recent­ly been incar­cer­at­ed in pro­longed con­di­tions of soli­tary con­fine­ment that are like­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and that vio­late inter­na­tion­al human rights norms, a DPIC analy­sis of data in a recent law review article has…

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform has sent a let­ter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland seek­ing infor­ma­tion on the Department of Justice’s death penal­ty prac­tices and poli­cies, includ­ing whether DOJ plans to resume fed­er­al exe­cu­tions and to obtain new sup­plies of the drug pen­to­bar­bi­tal to car­ry out additional…

Prosecutors hid favor­able evi­dence from Texas death-row pris­on­er Rodney Reed dur­ing his 1998 tri­al for the mur­der of Stacey Stites and then argued for his exe­cu­tion claim­ing that the evi­dence did not exist, Reed’s lawyers allege in a new court plead­ing filed in his…