Special Reports

The use or threat of the death penalty was a factor in more than 13% of exonerations across the United States in 2019 and nearly 95% of those cases involved some form of major misconduct, a Death Penalty Information Center analysis of data from the National Registry of Exonerations has revealed. The DPIC review found that the death penalty played a role in at least 19 of the 143 exonerations in 2019 (13.3%) listed in the Registry’s annual exonerations report, resulting in nearly 500 years lost…

The combination of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the continuing broad national decline in the use of capital punishment produced historically low numbers of new death sentences and executions in the first half of 2020. Even before the pandemic, the U.S. was poised for its sixth consecutive year with 50 or fewer new death sentences and 30 or fewer executions. At the midpoint of 2020, there had been 13 new death sentences, imposed in seven states, and six executions carried out by…

At least 1,300 prisoners have been incarcerated on U.S. death rows for more than two decades, in violation of U.S. human rights obligations, a Death Penalty Information Center analysis of death-row demographic data has found. The number represents more than half of all U.S. death-row prisoners as of January 1, 2020. Nearly one third of the prisoners whose extended incarcerations on death row violate their human rights are facing execution in California. Nearly 200 more condemned prisoners were…