Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

“The more people know about how the system of capital punishment really works, the less support they will have for that policy,” says Marc Bookman, the author of A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays. Bookman’s critically acclaimed collection of essays — described by Publishers Weekly as “a cogent and harrowing primer on what’s wrong with capital punishment” — channels his decades of capital litigation experience into 12 stories that exemplify the systemic failings of the…

In a memorandum that left to Congress the task of addressing systemic questions of arbitrariness, racial discrimination, and wrongful convictions affecting the administration of the federal death penalty, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland (pictured) issued a directive formally pausing federal executions while the Department of Justice (DOJ) undertakes a review of executive branch policies adopted in the last two years of the Trump administration. Garland’s memorandum, issued late in the…

The first half of 2021 spotlighted two continuing death-penalty trends in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center’s 2021 Mid-Year Review. On one hand, the continuing erosion of capital punishment in law and practice across the country; on the other hand, the extreme and often lawless conduct of the few jurisdictions that have attempted to carry out executions this year. The year began with three executions that concluded the Trump administration’s unparalleled spree…

Texas executed John Hummel on June 30, 2021, an honorably discharged former Marine with service-related trauma whose trial lawyer now works for the prosecutor who was trying to execute him. Hummel had come within two days of execution in March 2020, when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a stay because of health concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In June 2021, Hummel’s lawyer, Michael Mowla, indicated that no appeals would be filed to try to halt the execution. Hummel was…

For the second time in three years, the Nevada Department of Corrections (NDOC) and the state of Nevada are facing legal action from a pharmaceutical manufacturer after obtaining drugs for an execution in violation of the drug manufacturer’s policies. Hikma Phamaceuticals, a maker of the anesthetic ketamine, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford on June 24, 2021, threatening to sue the state for illegally obtaining ketamine for the execution of Zane Floyd, unless…

Three quarters of Dallas, Texas voters say they prefer some version of life imprisonment over the death penalty for people convicted of first-degree murder, a new poll has found. The poll, which was conducted on June 16 – 17, 2021 by the independent polling firm, Public Policy Polling (PPP), found broad support for sweeping changes in death-penalty policy in a county that is responsible for the second most executions in the United States since capital punishment resumed in the 1970s. By wide…

The number of prisoners on death row across the United States continues to decline while the average amount of time they have been on death row approaches 19 years, according to a new report from the Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). BJS’s June 2021 annual death penalty review found that 2,570 prisoners were under sentence of death in the custody of 29 states and the U.S. federal government as of December 31, 2019, down 2.1% from the 2,626 prisoners on death row at the…

An Ohio trial court has resentenced death-row prisoner David Braden (pictured) to life without parole, making him the first person in the nation taken off death row by a state law barring capital punishment for people with severe mental illness. On June 23, 2021, Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Colleen O’Donnell formally vacated the two death sentences imposed on Braden in June 1999 for the murders of his girlfriend and her father and sentenced him to life without parole on both…

Following additional revelations that Richard Glossip (pictured) may be innocent of the murder that sent him to Oklahoma’s death row in 1998, a bipartisan group of 34 state legislators are calling upon Governor Kevin Stitt and the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board to conduct an independent investigation into Glossip’s case. 28 Republican and six Democratic legislators — including many who are supporters of the death penalty — sent a letter to Stitt and the Board on May 17, 2021 advocating for…

Unheard voices from death row come to life in the new book, Right Here, Right Now: Life Stories from America’s Death Row. The book, a collaborative project between the arts collective Hidden Voices and more than 100 men on death rows across the United States, thematically weaves together their personal narratives to create a comprehensive picture of who is on death row, how they got there, what they experience, and why their lives matter. The men’s collaboration with Hidden Voices began in…