Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

When Dennis Perry stood with his defense team on the steps of the Brunswick, Georgia cour­t­house (pic­tured) after a tri­al judge dis­missed all charges against him, he was a free man, exon­er­at­ed of the racial­ly moti­vat­ed mur­ders of a dea­con and his wife in a local Black church in 1985. His case was one of at least four death-penal­­ty pros­e­cu­tions involv­ing mis­con­duct by Brunswick Judicial Circuit Assistant District Attorney John B. Johnson III.

A fed­er­al appeals court has upheld a low­er court’s deci­sion grant­i­ng a new tri­al to a Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­er whose retained lawyer was pre­vent­ed from rep­re­sent­ing him at…

In the July 2021 episode of Discussions with DPIC, DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham talks with Marc Bookman, the co-founder and Executive Director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation (ACCR), about his crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed new book, A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12…

The par­lia­ment of Sierra Leone vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly on July 23, 2021 to abol­ish the death penal­ty, mak­ing the West African nation of 7.8 mil­lion peo­ple the 23^rd coun­try on the con­ti­nent and the 110^th world­wide to end capital…

Lawyers for Texas death-row pris­on­er Rodney Reed (pic­tured) pre­sent­ed four days of tes­ti­mo­ny in a Bastrop County cour­t­house in an attempt to estab­lish his inno­cence of the mur­der of Stacey Stites, as activists, reli­gious lead­ers, and mem­bers of Reed’s fam­i­ly ral­lied in sup­port of his…

In a video inter­view posthu­mous­ly released on the anniver­sary of the first mod­ern exon­er­a­tion of a Florida death-row pris­on­er, for­mer Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerald Kogan has called for abo­li­tion of the state’s death penalty. ​“I believe that the death penal­ty should absolute­ly not be a pun­ish­ment deliv­ered by the State of Florida, or for that mat­ter, nei­ther any place in the United States or the world,” Kogan…

After clash­ing with Biden admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials over the pro­pri­ety of using state­ments obtained through tor­ture from Guantánamo detainees, Army Brigadier General Mark S. Martins (pic­tured), the chief pros­e­cu­tor in the Guantánamo Military Commissions tri­als, will retire from the mil­i­tary on September 30, 2021. Martins, who had served as the com­mis­sions’ chief pros­e­cu­tor through­out the Obama and Trump admin­is­tra­tions, abrupt­ly sub­mit­ted papers on July 7…

In a unan­i­mous rul­ing, the California Supreme Court has lim­it­ed the reach of a con­tro­ver­sial vot­er ini­tia­tive that was intend­ed to accel­er­ate judi­cial review of death-penal­­ty cas­es. In In re: Friend, decid­ed June 28, 2021, the court ruled that pro­vi­sions of Proposition 66 that strict­ly lim­it a death-row prisoner’s abil­i­ty to file suc­ces­sive chal­lenges to his or her cap­i­tal con­vic­tion or death sen­tence do not bar a cap­i­tal peti­tion­er from filing a…

As the first court hear­ing on Pervis Payne​’s claim that his death sen­tence must be vacat­ed because of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty was about to get under­way, promi­nent civ­il rights lead­ers and rel­a­tives of a civ­il rights icon added their voic­es to efforts to free the Tennessee death-row pris­on­er, who has con­sis­tent­ly asserted his…

In a rul­ing ren­dered along par­ti­san lines with­out ben­e­fit of oral argu­ment, the United States Supreme Court has over­turned the deci­sion of a fed­er­al appeals court that had vacat­ed the death sen­tence imposed on an Alabama death-row pris­on­er whose tri­al lawyers had failed to obtain expert assis­tance to present evi­dence of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. By a vote of 6 – 3, with all mem­bers of the con­ser­v­a­tive bloc of jus­tices vot­ing for the pros­e­cu­tion, the Court on…