DPIC Special Reports

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…

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…

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…

In 1993, the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights con­duct­ed hear­ings on what was then a rel­a­tive­ly unknown ques­tion: How sig­nif­i­cant was the risk that inno­cent peo­ple were being wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in the United States. After tak­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from four exonerees who had been wrong­ful­ly con­demned to death row, Representative Don Edwards, the sub­com­mit­tee chair­man, asked the Death Penalty Information Center to research the issue and…