Race

Tomorrow, the Death Penalty Information Center will release a report that doc­u­ments how racial bias and vio­lence affect­ed the past use of the death penal­ty in Missouri and how that his­to­ry con­tin­ues to influ­ence the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state. Compromised Justice: How A Legacy of Racial Violence Informs Missouri’s Death Penalty Today, sched­uled for release on December 1, 2023, notes that his­tor­i­cal­ly and into the present day, Missouri’s death penal­ty has been applied dis­crim­i­na­to­ri­ly based on race. 

On November 13, 2023, offi­cials announced that the U.S. Army had over­turned the con­vic­tions of 110 Black sol­diers of the 3^rd Battalion, 24^th Infantry Regiment, who were charged with mutiny in con­nec­tion with the racial vio­lence that occurred dur­ing the 1917 Camp Logan rebel­lion. Nineteen Black sol­diers were hanged fol­low­ing the court-mar­tial rul­ing on December 11, 1917, which was the largest exe­cu­tion of mil­i­tary sol­diers in his­to­ry. In her state­ment, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth stat­ed, “…these sol­diers were wrong­ly treat­ed because of their race and were not given…

On November 2, 2023, Demetrius Minor, the National Manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty and Davis Turner, a retired attor­ney whose broth­er was mur­dered in Nashville in 2009 and a board mem­ber of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, co-authored an op-ed in The Tennessean dis­cussing a recent report by the Death Penalty Information Center. ​“Doomed to Repeat: The Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty” details the his­to­ry of racial vio­lence and use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Tennessee. Mr. Minor and Mr. Turner note that…

Charles Ogletree, Jr., a pas­sion­ate advo­cate for racial and crim­i­nal jus­tice, died on August 4, 2023, after a long ill­ness. As a tenured pro­fes­sor at Harvard University, Professor Ogletree spoke and wrote often about the death penal­ty and men­tored many stu­dents, includ­ing both Barack and Michelle Obama. In a 2014 Washington Post op-ed, he crit­i­cized the use of the death penal­ty in the United States, par­tic­u­lar­ly for peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness, brain impair­ments, or who suf­fer from the effects of severe trau­ma. He not­ed that ​“bar­ring the death penalty…

On July 24, 2023, the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Parole set aside all 56 clemen­cy appli­ca­tions filed by near­ly every death-sen­tenced pris­on­er in Louisiana last month with­out review­ing the mer­its of a sin­gle one of them. The pris­on­ers asked for their sen­tences to be com­mut­ed to life with­out parole, but the Board made its deci­sion to return the appli­ca­tions based on an advi­so­ry, non­bind­ing opin­ion from the Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. Attorneys for death row pris­on­ers have respond­ed by argu­ing that the Attorney General’s office mis­in­ter­pret­ed the language…

Doug Evans, the District Attorney who tried death row exoneree Curtis Flowers for mur­der six times, is retir­ing. Mr. Flowers received four death sen­tences, but each con­vic­tion was over­turned when courts found that Evans had ille­gal­ly exclud­ed Black jurors from the jury pool.

In the June 2023 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Death Penalty Information Center Managing Director Anne Holsinger and Data Storyteller Tiana Herring dis­cuss the lat­est Racial Justice Storytelling Report, Doomed to Repeat: The Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty. The report exam­ines the his­to­ry of Tennessee’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem, doc­u­ment­ing the con­tin­ued impact of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and racial vio­lence on the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty. Ms. Herring, the author, pro­vides an overview of the report, explores key find­ings, explains its rela­tion­ship to DPIC’s ear­li­er work, and identifies…

Juneteenth is a cel­e­bra­tion and remem­brance of the end of slav­ery in the United States fol­low­ing the Union’s vic­to­ry in the Civil War. In June 2021, President Joseph Biden signed leg­is­la­tion estab­lish­ing Juneteenth as a fed­er­al hol­i­day, for­mal­ly com­mem­o­rat­ing the end of slav­ery. According to President Biden, ​“Juneteenth marks both the long, hard night of slav­ery and sub­ju­ga­tion, and the promise of a greater morn­ing to come.” Among the many groups com­mem­o­rat­ing Juneteenth was Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, a net­work of polit­i­cal and social con­ser­v­a­tives who ques­tion the…

On June 13, 2023, 51 of the 57 peo­ple on Louisiana’s death row filed clemen­cy appli­ca­tions with the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole, ask­ing Governor John Bel Edwards to com­mute their sen­tences to life with­out parole. The clemen­cy appli­ca­tions describe flaws in the indi­vid­ual cas­es – includ­ing men­tal ill­ness and intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, inno­cence claims, and offi­cial mis­con­duct – but cumu­la­tive­ly por­tray a death penal­ty sys­tem marked by sig­nif­i­cant sys­temic prob­lems. The board­’s mem­bers, all of whom are appoint­ed by Edwards, will weigh the appli­ca­tions indi­vid­u­al­ly and then send their…

In Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy, author Alex Mar presents an in-depth account of a vio­lent homi­cide and its impact on a racial­ly divid­ed com­mu­ni­ty and the indi­vid­u­als involved. Mar not only dis­cuss­es the fears asso­ci­at­ed with mod­ern crime and pun­ish­ment but also address­es the human capac­i­ty for com­pas­sion and for­give­ness. In the pro­logue, Mar writes that ​“this is a sto­ry that asks what any com­mu­ni­ty is will­ing to accept as just con­se­quences — as jus­tice — for harm done. It is a dif­fi­cult ques­tion, one…