DPIC 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 DPIC. 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 DPIC’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 DPIC’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: 11 — 15
Dec 16, 2020
The Death Penalty in 2020: Year End Report
2020 was abnormal in almost every way, and that was clearly the case when it came to capital punishment in the United States. The interplay of four forces shaped the U.S. death penalty landscape in 2020: the nation’s long-term trend away from capital punishment; the worst global pandemic in more than a century; nationwide protests for racial justice; and the historically aberrant conduct of the federal administration. At the end of the year, more states had abolished the death penalty or gone…
Read MoreOct 23, 2020
DPIC Analysis: Use or Threat of Death Penalty Implicated in 19 Exoneration Cases in 2019
The use or threat of the death penalty was a factor in more than 13% of exonerations across the United States in 2019 and nearly 95% of those cases involved some form of major misconduct, a Death Penalty Information Center analysis of data from the National Registry of Exonerations has revealed. The DPIC review found that the death penalty played a role in at least 19 of the 143 exonerations in 2019 (13.3%) listed in the Registry’s annual exonerations report, resulting in nearly 500 years…
Read MoreSep 15, 2020
Enduring Injustice: the Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty
(Washington, D.C.) As social movements pressure policymakers to redress injustices in the criminal legal system and to institute reforms to make the process more fair and equitable, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) today released, “Enduring Injustice: the Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty.” This report provides an in-depth look at the historical role that race has played in the death penalty and details the pervasive role racial discrimination continues…
Read MoreJul 20, 2020
The Federal Government Restarts Federal Executions Amid Procedural Concerns and a Pandemic
The federal government executed Daniel Lewis Lee the morning of July 14, 2020. His execution was the first conducted by the federal government in seventeen years, and it was followed closely by the executions of Wesley Ira Purkey (July 16) and Dustin Lee Honken (July 17). With these executions, the federal government has joined the small minority of jurisdictions that conduct executions and the even smaller number of jurisdictions that are willing to pursue them in the midst of the worst…
Read MoreJul 02, 2020
DPIC MID-YEAR REVIEW: Pandemic and Continuing Historic Decline Produce Record-Low Death Penalty Use in First Half of 2020
The combination of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the continuing broad national decline in the use of capital punishment produced historically low numbers of new death sentences and executions in the first half of…
Read More