Robert Dunham to Leave Death Penalty Information Center After 8 Years as Executive Director, Board Names Richard Dieter as Interim Director

Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham will be leav­ing DPIC after eight years at its helm. He will be replaced on inter­im basis by for­mer Executive Director Richard Dieter.

“We wish to express our deep grat­i­tude to Mr. Dunham for his vision and lead­er­ship over the past eight years and our best wish­es in his future endeav­ors,” DPIC Board President George Kendall said in a state­ment released January 30, 2023. ​“We are also grat­i­fied that Mr. Dieter is will­ing to step in to ensure a smooth transition.”

Dieter, who pre­vi­ous­ly served as DPIC’s Executive Director from 1992 to 2015, has reas­sumed the post. Dunham will tran­si­tion to a role as Senior Policy Analyst while com­plet­ing work on a vari­ety of research and writing projects.

Dunham became Executive Director in March 2015. During his tenure, DPIC pro­duced ground­break­ing reports on exe­cu­tion secrecy and race and the U.S. death penal­ty, mod­ern­ized its award-win­ning web­site, includ­ing the addi­tion of inter­ac­tive graph­ic fea­tures, and assem­bled its Death Penalty Census of more than 9,700 death sen­tences imposed in the U.S. in the past fifty years— the most exten­sive data­base of its kind. The spe­cial reports and pol­i­cy analy­ses he has authored include DPIC’s 2021 Special Report: The Innocence Epidemic, and DPIC analy­ses on the caus­es of wrong­ful con­vic­tions and how the use or threat of the death penal­ty has led to wrong­ful cap­i­tal and non-capital convictions. 

He has also host­ed numer­ous DPIC webi­na­rs and pod­casts and expand­ed DPIC’s cov­er­age and analy­sis of issues such as pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, the U.S.’s use of the death penal­ty against indi­vid­u­als with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, the out­comes of death war­rants, and U.S. human rights vio­la­tions in the treat­ment of death row prisoners.

“It has been an hon­or to serve as DPIC’s Executive Director,” Dunham said. ​“It’s the best job I’ve ever had. I look for­ward to work­ing with Dick again and, after tak­ing some time off to recharge my bat­ter­ies, to remain­ing active in death penal­ty policy matters.”

The Death Penalty Information Center is a nation­al non-prof­it, non­par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion serv­ing the media and the pub­lic with reli­able data and fac­tu­al analy­sis con­cern­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Founded in 1990, the Center pro­motes informed dis­cus­sion of the death penal­ty by prepar­ing in-depth reports, con­duct­ing brief­in­gs for jour­nal­ists, and serv­ing as a source of accu­rate infor­ma­tion to all con­cerned with this issue.