Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

A joint inves­ti­ga­tion by ProPublica and ABC15 Arizona reviewed more than 300 cas­es over the past two decades where Maricopa County pros­e­cu­tors sought the death penal­ty and found that only 13% result­ed in death sen­tences. In most cas­es a jury nev­er got close to con­sid­er­ing whether to sen­tence some­one to death: in more than three-quar­ters of cas­es, defen­dants pled guilty in exchange for less­er pun­ish­ment, or pros­e­cu­tors reversed course before tri­al. In only 41 of…

According to Governor Mike Braun (pic­tured), Indiana has deplet­ed the sup­ply of pen­to­bar­bi­tal it uses in its lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions. Given that the last of the dos­es pur­chased in December 2024 expired and went unused, Gov. Braun does not intend to renew the state’s sup­ply. According to ear­li­er report­ing by the Indiana Capital Chronicle, the Indiana Department of Correction (IDC) spent $900,000 on pen­to­bar­bi­tal in late 2024 in prepa­ra­tion for the execution of…

On June 6, 2025, District Judge Matthew Bates issued a rul­ing find­ing Utah death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­er Ralph Menzies men­tal­ly com­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed despite con­cerns pre­sent­ed by Mr. Menzies’ attor­neys about his vas­cu­lar demen­tia. In his rul­ing, Judge Bates agreed that Mr. Menzies suf­fers from vas­cu­lar demen­tia but said Mr. Menzies had failed to show​“by a pre­pon­der­ance of the evi­dence that his men­tal con­di­tion pre­vents him from reach­ing a rational…

Sonia​“Sunny” Jacobs, a for­mer death row pris­on­er whose sto­ry of wrong­ful con­vic­tion was fea­tured in the off-Broadway play​“The Exonerated)” and who became a promi­nent advo­cate for for­mer­ly incar­cer­at­ed pris­on­ers, died in a house fire, along with her care­giv­er, in County Galway, Ireland, on June 3, 2025. Ms. Jacobs was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1976 for the mur­ders of two law enforce­ment offi­cers at a Florida rest stop. She and Jesse Tafero, the father of…

Scott Panetti died on Texas’ death row at the end of May 2025 after 30 years in prison. He became well-known for the role his case played in clar­i­fy­ing the legal stan­dard for deter­min­ing when defen­dants are com­pe­tent to face exe­cu­tion — prece­dent that con­tin­ues to shape court deci­sions nation­wide. Mr. Panetti’s severe men­tal ill­ness man­i­fest­ed in his late teens, lead­ing to more than a dozen psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal­iza­tions through the 1980s and ear­ly 1990s. His…

In this month’s pod­cast episode of 12:01 The Death Penalty in Context, DPI​’s Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Corinna Barrett Lain, the S.D. Roberts & Sandra Moore Professor of Law at the University of Richmond School of Law and author of the recent­ly pub­lished book, Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection. Ms. Lain’s new book chal­lenges a wide­ly held assump­tion that lethal injec­tion is a pain­less, reg­u­lat­ed, and medically-sound…

On April 16, 2025, Wyandotte County District Judge Bill Klapper issued his order in the com­bined cas­es of Hugo Villaneuva-Morales and Antoine Fielder, broad­ly con­demn­ing the Kansas death penal­ty as cost­ly, racial­ly biased, and inef­fec­tive as a deter­rent. Judge Klapper’s order fol­lows an exten­sive evi­den­tiary hear­ing and pro­vides thor­ough and detailed find­ings on an array of con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tions relat­ed to the use of the death penal­ty in the state. Mr.

In this month’s pod­cast episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI​’s Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Professors Craig Haney and Frank Baumgartner, and DPI​’s Staff Attorney Leah Roemer about the lega­cy of the US Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Roper v. Simmons and the legal and sci­en­tif­ic land­scape sur­round­ing the use of the death penal­ty for young adults ages 18 – 20. Professors Baumgartner and Haney, along with fel­low researcher Karen Steele,…