DPI Reports

Below are reports released by the Death Penalty Information Center since its incep­tion, cov­er­ing sub­jects such as race, inno­cence, politi­ciza­tion, costs of the death penal­ty, and more. When open­ing a report, please allow the report page to load ful­ly before select­ing links to sec­tions or foot­notes. Most of these reports are also avail­able in print­ed form from DPIC. For a copy of one of these reports, e‑mail DPI. For bulk orders, please down­load our Resource Order Form.

Reports are sep­a­rat­ed into Year End Reports, In-Depth Reports, and Special Reports. In-Depth Reports are DPI’s sig­na­ture long, thor­ough reports on major death-penal­ty issues. These include ​“The 2% Death Penalty,” exam­in­ing geo­graph­ic arbi­trari­ness in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, and ​“Behind the Curtain,” cov­er­ing secre­cy in the death penal­ty sys­tem. Special Reports are short­er, and typ­i­cal­ly address a spe­cif­ic event or ques­tion. These include DPI’s expla­na­tion of the 2017 spate of exe­cu­tions that were sched­uled in Arkansas, and our analy­sis of the largest num­ber of exe­cu­tions per­formed on a sin­gle day.
 

Reports: 46 — 50

Dec 15, 2005

The Death Penalty in 2005: Year End Report

The year 2005 may be remem­bered as the year that life with­out parole became an accept­able alter­na­tive to the death penal­ty in the U.S. Texas became the 37th out of 38 death penal­ty states to adopt this option for its juries. New York’s leg­is­la­ture did not restore the death penal­ty after it was found uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, leav­ing life with­out parole as the pun­ish­ment for cap­i­tal mur­der. Across the coun­try, the num­ber of death sen­tences dropped to record lows and some of the most notorious…

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Oct 18, 2005

Blind Justice: Juries Deciding Life and Death With Only Half the Truth

Blind Justice, the most recent report to be released by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), is the first to focus on the prob­lems of the death penal­ty from the per­spec­tive of jurors. While jurors have always occu­pied an esteemed posi­tion in the broad­er crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in the United States, in cap­i­tal cas­es the respon­si­bil­i­ty of jurors is even more crit­i­cal as they decide whether defen­dants should live or die. Even with this unique author­i­ty in cap­i­tal cas­es, they are treated…

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Dec 15, 2004

The Death Penalty in 2004: Year End Report

By every mea­sure, the death penal­ty in the U.S. has been in decline since 1999 and the evi­dence from 2004 con­tin­ues that trend. Whether exam­in­ing death sen­tences, exe­cu­tions, the size of death row or pub­lic sup­port, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment num­bers have dropped in a way not seen in over 30…

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Sep 01, 2004

Innocence and the Crisis in the American Death Penalty

This report cat­a­logs the emer­gence of inno­cence as the most impor­tant issue in the long-sim­mer­ing death penal­ty debate. The sheer num­ber of cas­es and the per­va­sive aware­ness of this trend in the public’s con­scious­ness have changed the way cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is per­ceived around the coun­try. The steady evo­lu­tion of this issue since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976 has been accel­er­at­ed in recent years by the devel­op­ment of DNA tech­nol­o­gy, the new gold stan­dard of forensic investigation.

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Dec 18, 2003

The Death Penalty in 2003: Year End Report

The death penal­ty con­tin­ued its recent attri­tion in 2003, with exe­cu­tions, death sen­tences, and the death row pop­u­la­tion all low­er than a few years ago. Public sup­port for the death penal­ty dropped to its low­est lev­el in 25 years. At the same time, exon­er­a­tions from death row helped spur leg­isla­tive reforms in the capital punishment…

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