Entries by Death Penalty Information Center


News 

Apr 052021

Federal Court Approves DNA Testing for Man Who Was Spared Execution by Texas’s Refusal to Allow Religious Adviser in Execution Chamber

A fed­er­al dis­trict court has ruled that Texas uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly denied DNA test­ing to a death-row pris­on­er who is alive today only because of a last-minute stay of exe­cu­tion grant­ed because the state refused to allow his reli­gious advis­er to accom­pa­ny him in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber. In a 26-page rul­ing issued on March 23, 2021, Judge Hilda Tagle of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas paved the way for Ruben Gutierrez (pic­tured) to obtain DNA testing that…

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News 

Apr 012021

Newsom Appoints Legislator Who Co-Authored Constitutional Amendment Against Death Penalty to be California’s Attorney General

California Governor Gavin Newsom has appoint­ed Rob Bonta (pic­tured), a state leg­is­la­tor who co-authored a pro­posed state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to ban cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, as California’s attor­ney gen­er­al. Bonta fills the vacan­cy cre­at­ed by President Joe Biden’s appoint­ment of for­mer state attor­ney gen­er­al Xavier Becerra as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human…

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News 

Mar 312021

DPIC Podcast: Ethical-Design Advocate Raphael Sperry on Why the American Institute of Architects Banned Members From Designing Death Chambers

In the March 31, 2021 pod­cast episode of Discussions with DPIC, man­ag­ing direc­tor of DPIC, Anne Holsinger, and Raphael Sperry, pres­i­dent of Architects/​Designers/​Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), dis­cuss the American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) new ethics pol­i­cy pro­hibit­ing mem­bers from design­ing exe­cu­tion cham­bers and death-row soli­tary confinement cells. Architects have been com­plic­it in human rights abuse by designing…

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News 

Mar 302021

How Capital Defenders Helped End Virginia’s Death Penalty

Virginias cap­i­tal defenders have worked them­selves out of a job,” accord­ing to David Johnson, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission. The commonwealth’s four cap­i­tal defense offices, which opened in 2002, are cred­it­ed with bring­ing about a dra­mat­ic decline in death sen­tences. That decline was a major fac­tor in Virginia becom­ing the first south­ern state to abol­ish the death…

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News 

Mar 262021

Georgia Supreme Court Asked to Overturn Nearly Impossible’ Evidentiary Burden of Proving Intellectual Disability

The Georgia Supreme Court is con­sid­er­ing a chal­lenge to the unique­ly high bur­den of proof the state impos­es on cap­i­tal defen­dants and death-row pris­on­ers to deter­mine whether they are inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. On March 23, 2021, the court heard argu­ment in a case brought by Rodney Young, a death-row pris­on­er who asserts that Georgia’s harsh stan­dard uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sub­jects defen­dants with intellectual disability…

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