Racial Justice Reports

Historical Foundations: Racist Roots To understand the modern use of the death penalty in Georgia, it is necessary to begin with its historical foundations. Capital punishment in the United States has long been applied unevenly across racial groups, and Georgia’s history reflects this broader pattern. The Equal Justice Initiative identifies Georgia as one of twelve states with the highest number of documented…

Historical Foundations: Racist Roots
To understand the modern use of the death penalty in South Carolina, it is necessary to begin with its historical foundations. Capital punishment in the United States has long been applied unevenly across racial groups, and South Carolina’s history reflects this broader pattern. The state has a well-documented use of state-sanctioned violence that has…

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…

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…

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 today. Historically, Missouri’s Death Penalty Was Applied Discriminatorily Based on Race Decades before Missouri gained statehood, the territory adopted capital punishment laws that were applied based on race. There were at…