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…

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…

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…