Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

UPDATE: The three-day evi­den­tiary hear­ing con­clud­ed on August 13. Testimony cen­tered on three con­test­ed issues: whether Ms. Pike’s throm­bo­cy­to­sis cre­ates and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al risk of IV com­pli­ca­tions and pul­monary ede­ma dur­ing lethal injec­tion; whether trans­fer­ring her to Riverbend Maximum Security Institution and plac­ing her under close obser­va­tion before exe­cu­tion would retrau­ma­tize her giv­en her doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of child­hood sex­u­al abuse and…

The cas­es of eight men exe­cut­ed between 1986 and 1998 will be part of a Virginia State Crime Commission review into the prac­tices of Mary Jane Burton, a foren­sic sci­en­tist who alleged­ly mis­han­dled DNA evi­dence and gave inac­cu­rate tes­ti­mo­ny in court. The cas­es are among more than 7,000 cas­es linked to Ms. Burton that are being assessed after jour­nal­ist Tessa Kramer uncov­ered con­cerns about Ms. Burton’s meth­ods. Ms. Kramer’s pod­cast, Admissible: Shreds of Evidence,…

On June 29, 2026, the Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed a low­er court’s deci­sion find­ing Jimmie Duncan fac­tu­al­ly inno­cent and vacat­ing his first-degree mur­der con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. Mr. Duncan was sen­tenced to death for the 1993 death of his girlfriend’s tod­dler, Haley Oliveaux, large­ly based on faulty bite mark evi­dence. In April 2025, Louisiana District Court Judge Alvin Sharp held that expert tes­ti­mo­ny pre­sent­ed dur­ing an evi­den­tiary hearing demonstrated…

As glob­al experts gath­er in Paris this week to exam­ine the state of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment world­wide, the Death Penalty Information Center will be among them, as a source of author­i­ta­tive data and research on how the death penal­ty is oper­at­ing in the United States. The 9^th World Congress Against the Death Penalty, orga­nized by ECPM (Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort) and host­ed by the French Republic, runs June 30 through July 2 at the Maison de la Radio et de la Musique in…

Saturday April 25^th is National DNA Day, mark­ing the anniver­sary of the 1953 dis­cov­ery of DNA​’s dou­ble helix struc­ture and the 2003 com­ple­tion of the Human Genome Project. Today, the Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to present a new resource exam­in­ing the con­tro­ver­sial role of​“junk sci­ence” in cap­i­tal cas­es. When DNA test­ing became one of the most rig­or­ous­ly val­i­dat­ed tools in foren­sic sci­ence, its devel­op­ment also prompt­ed greater scruti­ny of other…

DPI​’s​“What to Know” series exam­ines cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from mul­ti­ple angles, one top­ic at a time. Each install­ment pro­vides essen­tial facts and data on spe­cif­ic aspects of the death penal­ty. Why it mat­ters: Deterrence is among the most com­mon­ly cit­ed jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for the death penal­ty, yet decades of research have failed to pro­duce cred­i­ble evi­dence that use of the death penal­ty has an impact on homi­cide rates. ### Key Facts: — 88% of the nation’s…