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: 11 — 15

Jul 01, 2021

DPIC 2021 MID-YEAR REVIEW: Virginia’s Historic Death Penalty Abolition Accompanies Continuing Record-Low Death Penalty Usage in First Half of Year

The first half of 2021 spot­light­ed two con­tin­u­ing death-penal­ty trends in the United States: the con­tin­u­ing ero­sion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in law and prac­tice across the coun­try; and the extreme and often law­less con­duct of the few juris­dic­tions that have attempt­ed to car­ry out exe­cu­tions this year. The year began with three exe­cu­tions that con­clud­ed the Trump administration’s unpar­al­leled spree of 13 fed­er­al civil­ian exe­cu­tions in six months and two days, and saw state attempts to revive…

Read More

Feb 18, 2021

DPIC Special Report: The Innocence Epidemic

In 1993, the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights con­duct­ed hear­ings on what was then a rel­a­tive­ly unknown ques­tion: How sig­nif­i­cant was the risk that inno­cent peo­ple were being wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in the United States. After tak­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from four exonerees who had been wrong­ful­ly con­demned to death row, Representative Don Edwards, the sub­com­mit­tee chair­man, asked the Death Penalty Information Center to research the issue and…

Read More

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 More

Oct 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 More

Sep 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 More