DPIC In-Depth Reports

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DPIC In-Depth Reports

Sep 15, 2020

Enduring Injustice: the Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty

(Washington, D.C.) As social move­ments pres­sure pol­i­cy­mak­ers to redress injus­tices in the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem and to insti­tute reforms to make the process more fair and equi­table, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) today released, Enduring Injustice: the Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty.” This report…

DPIC In-Depth Reports

Nov 20, 2018

Behind the Curtain: Secrecy and the Death Penalty in the United States

During the past sev­en years, states have begun con­duct­ing exe­cu­tions with drugs and drug com­bi­na­tions that have nev­er been tried before. They have done so behind an expand­ing veil of secre­cy laws that shield the exe­cu­tion process from pub­lic scruti­ny. As phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies have tak­en action to pre­vent states from using their medicines…

DPIC In-Depth Reports

Nov 10, 2015

Battle Scars: Military Veterans and the Death Penalty

PTSD has affect­ed an enor­mous num­ber of vet­er­ans return­ing from com­bat zones. Over 800,000 Vietnam vet­er­ans suf­fered from PTSD. Perhaps even more sur­pris­ing, when many of these vet­er­ans faced death penal­ty tri­als, their ser­vice and relat­ed ill­ness­es were bare­ly touched on as their lives were being weighed by judges and juries. Despite being given…

DPIC In-Depth Reports

Oct 01, 2013

The 2% Death Penalty: How a Minority of Counties Produce Most Death Cases at Enormous Costs to All

Likewise, only 2% of the coun­ties are respon­si­ble for the major­i­ty of today’s death row pop­u­la­tion and recent death sen­tences. To put it anoth­er way, all of the state exe­cu­tions since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed stem from cas­es in just 15% of the coun­ties in the U.S. The District Attorney respon­si­ble for this aggres­sive use was recently…

DPIC In-Depth Reports

Jun 22, 2011

Struck by Lightning: The Continuing Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty Thirty-Five Years After Its Reinstatement in 1976

The United States Supreme Court approved the re-instate­ment of the death penal­ty 35 years ago on July 2, 1976. A major­i­ty of the nine Justices who served on the Supreme Court in 1976 when the death penal­ty was approved even­tu­al­ly con­clud­ed the exper­i­ment had failed. Four states have abol­ished the death penal­ty in the past four years, and…