New Voices

In a May 23, 2024 op-ed pub­lished in The Dallas Morning News, Brian Wharton, the retired super­vis­ing detec­tive in Robert Roberson’s case, urged Anderson County District Attorney Allyson Mitchell to reex­am­ine the case and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to reex­am­ine a pend­ing motion on Mr. Roberson’s inno­cence claims, which have pre­vi­ous­ly been denied. ​“It would be a ter­ri­ble lega­cy for all of us to be asso­ci­at­ed with exe­cut­ing an inno­cent man based on a rush to judg­ment and…

An April 28, 2024 report by Ed Pilkington in The Guardian chron­i­cles the trau­ma expe­ri­ences by prison offi­cials assigned to car­ry out exe­cu­tions. Oklahoma cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers asked Attorney General Gentner Drummond to slow the pace of exe­cu­tions, cit­ing ​“last­ing trau­ma,” Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and alco­hol abuse among staff due to fre­quent exe­cu­tions in the state. Former cor­rec­tions direc­tor Justin Jones told Mr. Pilkington, ​“It affects your men­tal state when it becomes so routine,”…

“It is long past time to abol­ish the death penal­ty in the U.S.,” write the edi­tors for the Scientific American. In a March 19, 2024 op-ed titled ​“Evidence Does Not Support the Use of the Death Penalty,” the authors cite an abun­dance of stud­ies demon­strat­ing that the death penal­ty is not a deter­rent to crime, but is a flawed, racial­ly biased, and cost­ly prac­tice respon­si­ble for sen­tenc­ing inno­cent lives to…

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Judge Elsa Alcala, who served on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals from 2011 to 2018. In addi­tion to serv­ing as a judge at the appeals and tri­al lev­el, she worked as a pros­e­cu­tor, crim­i­nal defense attor­ney, and most recent­ly as a jus­tice-reform lob­by­ist dur­ing her three-decade career in crim­i­nal law. She shares how these expe­ri­ences have informed her per­spec­tive on the death penal­ty and…