DPIC Special Reports
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Nov 14, 2024
Fool’s Gold: How the Federal Death Penalty Has Perpetuated Racially Discriminatory Practices Throughout History
In 2020, President Joe Biden promised to end the federal death penalty during his administration and his Attorney General, Merrick Garland, acknowledged its many longstanding concerns as reasons to pause federal executions pending an internal review of Department of Justice policies and practices. Project 2025, the product of a political conservative movement, calls for President Trump to “obtain finality” for all federal death row prisoners. Before any decision about future use of the…
Read MoreMay 14, 2024
Broken Promises: How a History of Racial Violence and Bias Shaped Ohio’s Death Penalty
In January 2024, Ohio lawmakers announced plans to expand the use of the death penalty to permit executions with nitrogen gas, as Alabama had just done a week earlier. But at the same time the Attorney General and the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association are championing this legislation, a bipartisan group of state legislators has introduced a bill to abolish the death penalty based on “significant concerns on who is sentenced to death and how that sentence is carried out.” The competing…
Read MoreDec 01, 2023
Compromised Justice: How A Legacy of Racial Violence Informs Missouri’s Death Penalty Today
Missouri is one of a handful of states that has consistently executed people in the last five years. In 2023, Missouri executed four people. Understanding the historical application of the death penalty in Missouri helps our understanding of how capital punishment is used…
Read MoreJun 16, 2023
Doomed to Repeat: The Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty
The historical use of capital punishment in Tennessee shows a clear connection between the extrajudicial lynchings of the 1800s and 1900s and the state sanctioned death penalty practices of today. As one lynching expert notes, “[l]ocal traditions, situations, and personalities must be considered in any attempt to explain patterns of lynching.…” This emphasis on locality parallels modern death penalty trends in Tennessee — as well as the rest of the nation — wherein death sentencing is heavily…
Read MoreOct 14, 2022
Deeply Rooted: How Racial History Informs Oklahoma’s Death Penalty
Oklahoma’s death penalty is at a crossroads. On August 25, 2022, Oklahoma executed the first person in a series of 25 executions set to occur nearly every month through 2024. The projected increase in executions in Oklahoma comes while the death penalty is in decline nationwide; 2021 had the fewest executions since 1988. Furthermore, Oklahoma’s planned executions are scheduled to move forward despite evidence that there are serious problems with Oklahoma’s death penalty that the state has…
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