Recent Legislative Activity

Jun 02, 2023

Florida’s recent deci­sion to allow death sen­tences with­out a unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tion increas­es the risk of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son, accord­ing to con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor Christian Schneider (pic­tured). In a May 25, 2023 col­umn for Th…

International

Jun 01, 2023

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s (pic­tured) deci­sion to sign the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 on May 29 has drawn wide­spread inter­na­tion­al crit­i­cism. The new law pre­scribes that peo­ple con­vict­ed of ​“aggra­vat­ed homo­sex­u­al­i­ty” may now be punished …

Mental Illness

May 31, 2023

In the lat­est episode of Discussions with DPIC, Anne Holsinger, Managing Director of DPIC, inter­views Dr. Sally Satel (pic­tured), a psy­chi­a­trist and senior fel­low at the American Enterprise Institute. She shares her insights on the role of s…

Victims' Families

May 30, 2023

On May 25, 2023, 12 death-qual­i­fied jurors and six alter­nates were select­ed in the fed­er­al cap­i­tal tri­al of Robert Bowers, who is charged with killing 11 wor­ship­pers at a Pittsburgh syn­a­gogue in 2018. Prosecutors struck all the Black, Hispanic, an…

Innocence

May 26, 2023

“[W]e have come over time to see the flaws in our nation’s jus­tice sys­tem and to view the state’s death penal­ty laws in par­tic­u­lar as legal­ly and moral­ly trou­bling,” wrote two for­mer gov­er­nors of Alabama in an op-ed for the W…

Innocence

May 25, 2023

Former fed­er­al Oklahoma pros­e­cu­tors Patrick Ryan and Daniel Webber co-authored an edi­to­r­i­al in The Oklahoman on May 17, 2023 express­ing seri­ous con­cerns about Richard Glossip’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. The writ­ers not­ed tha…

Human Rights

May 24, 2023

Iran con­tin­ues to use the death penal­ty in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law, includ­ing death sen­tences for crimes fail­ing to meet the ​“most seri­ous” crime thresh­old, the use of tor­ture, and per­form­ing pub­lic exe­cu­tions. According to Iran Human Right…

International

May 23, 2023

A May 20, 2023 edi­to­r­i­al in a lead­ing med­ical aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nal con­cludes that physi­cian par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­tions ​“goes against the eth­i­cal foun­da­tion of the physi­cian’s role” and argues that doc­tors and med­ical asso­ci­a­tions should oppose capita…

Death Row Overview

May 22, 2023

The num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death or fac­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a death sen­tence in pend­ing cap­i­tal retri­al or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings con­tin­ued its more than two-decade decline in the third quar­ter of last year, accord­ing to the NAACP…

Human Rights

May 19, 2023

UPDATE: On May 31, 2023, U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Bough issued a stay of exe­cu­tion, pend­ing an evi­den­tiary hear­ing on whether a juror was unqual­i­fied under Missouri law.Michael Tisius is an artist. He is also a death row …