Methodology

Each year, DPI​’s Year End Report is back­stopped by research that attempts to fill in numer­ous gaps in the death penal­ty land­scape. Reliable infor­ma­tion about the death penal­ty is often dif­fi­cult to access, includ­ing infor­ma­tion on cur­rent and his­tor­i­cal instances where the death penal­ty was sought, the demo­graph­ics of defen­dants and vic­tims, and even cer­tain infor­ma­tion regard­ing the death row pop­u­la­tion itself. DPI​’s method­ol­o­gy makes every attempt to ensure the robust­ness of our quan­ti­ta­tive and qual­i­ta­tive find­ings, tri­an­gu­lat­ing the data wher­ev­er pos­si­ble with judi­cial, gov­ern­men­tal, and schol­ar­ly resources, and col­lab­o­rat­ing with estab­lished aca­d­e­mics in the field as well as rep­utable advo­ca­cy or media sources. 

DPI col­lects infor­ma­tion on new sen­tences, exe­cu­tions, or exon­er­a­tions through­out the year, along with data on re-sen­­tenc­ing, the deaths of death row pris­on­ers, death sen­tences imposed for dif­fer­ent crimes on the same per­son, and demo­graph­ic data on vic­tims and defen­dants. DPI also con­tin­u­ous­ly col­lects infor­ma­tion on report­ed exe­cu­tions across the globe. In prepa­ra­tion for our annu­al report, each fall DPI cor­rob­o­rates our find­ings with respec­tive state con­tacts with­in the legal com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing pub­lic defend­ers work­ing in active death penal­ty juris­dic­tions or state Departments of Corrections. DPI also relies on an in-house tool, the DPI Death Penalty Census Database, com­piled in 2022 and con­tin­u­ous­ly updat­ed through­out the year. Each entry in our Census Database is rig­or­ous­ly ver­i­fied by two inde­pen­dent sources for our cen­tral data fields, includ­ing the names of defen­dants and vic­tims, alleged charges, sen­tenc­ing, appel­late pro­ce­dure, and any fur­ther case devel­op­ments such as exon­er­a­tion or exe­cu­tion. This data is stored on a secure dri­ve acces­si­ble only to DPI staff mem­bers. Specific doc­u­ments are avail­able to researchers and the pub­lic upon request. 

Each year, we are delight­ed to pro­vide you with as much com­pre­hen­sive data as we can; nonethe­less, we are always ready to learn from your sug­ges­tions and invite you to active­ly shape our data­base by con­tribut­ing to the DPI Death Penalty Census. We are very grate­ful to the many indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions that have helped make us a reli­able source of infor­ma­tion on death penal­ty trends and devel­op­ments. This report is thanks in large part to those gen­er­ous con­tri­bu­tions of time, insight, and information.