Publications & Testimony

In May 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court issued deci­sions regard­ing two key types of claims that often appear in cap­i­tal cas­es: jury dis­crim­i­na­tion and intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. A bipar­ti­san group of con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­al jus­tices car­ried each deci­sion. The Court ruled in favor of Mississippi pris­on­er Terry Pitchford, allow­ing his jury dis­crim­i­na­tion claim to pro­ceed; the Court sep­a­rate­ly dis­missed an Alabama case as improv­i­dent­ly grant­ed, which…

Tennessee​’s attempt to exe­cute Tony Carruthers on May 21, 2026, failed after exe­cu­tion team mem­bers could not estab­lish an intra­venous line after more than an hour of attempts, prompt­ing Governor Bill Lee to grant a one-year reprieve. In a writ­ten state­ment, the Tennessee Department of Corrections said med­ical per­son­nel had quick­ly estab­lished a pri­ma­ry IV line but were unable to estab­lish a back­up line as required by the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. Efforts to…

The Death Penalty Information Center’s new report on race and the death penal­ty in South Carolina places the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem in his­tor­i­cal con­text, doc­u­ment­ing how racial and state sanc­tioned vio­lence con­tin­ue to influ­ence the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty. Examining South Carolina’s History of Racial Violence and Capital Punishment, released May 2026, notes the state’s well-doc­u­­­men­t­ed use of state-sanc­­­tioned vio­lence that has…

Absent court action, Tony Carruthers is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Tennessee on May 21, 2026, despite untest­ed DNA evi­dence, an inno­cence claim, and seri­ous men­tal ill­ness con­cerns. On May 18, faith lead­ers, civ­il rights advo­cates and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers marched to the state capi­tol to urge Governor Bill Lee to grant Mr. Carruthers clemen­cy or stay his exe­cu­tion to allow addi­tion­al DNA test­ing, deliv­er­ing a peti­tion with over 130,000 sig­na­tures. Gov. Lee…

DPI’s​“What to Know” series exam­ines cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from mul­ti­ple angles, one top­ic at a time. Each install­ment pro­vides essen­tial facts and data on spe­cif­ic aspects of the death penal­ty. Please vis­it DPI’s Discrimination in Jury Selection page for a deep­er dive into the issue. Why it mat­ters: Nearly four decades after the U.S. Supreme Court barred race-based juror strikes in Batson v. Kentucky (1986), stud­ies have found that pros­e­cu­tors in North Carolina…

On May 14, 2026, Edward Busby became the 600^th per­son exe­cut­ed in Texas in the last 50 years. A three-judge pan­el of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had tem­porar­i­ly stayed his exe­cu­tion, but the U.S. Supreme Court lift­ed the stay, allow­ing the exe­cu­tion to pro­ceed. Mr. Busby is a per­son whom all experts agree has intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, and he should there­fore have been legal­ly inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion. Mr. Busby’s case is illustrative of…

On death row, pris­on­ers expe­ri­ence some of the harsh­est con­di­tions in the American prison sys­tem, which often take a severe psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal toll. Despite these chal­lenges, many death-sen­­tenced pris­on­ers com­plete­ly trans­form in prison — they become remorse­ful, accept respon­si­bil­i­ty, and devote them­selves to edu­ca­tion, men­tor­ship, faith, and advo­ca­cy. Their sto­ries stand in stark con­trast to the com­mon nar­ra­tive that peo­ple sen­tenced to death…

On April 24, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released a report propos­ing an expan­sion of the fed­er­al death penal­ty, includ­ing adding fir­ing squad, elec­tro­cu­tion, and lethal gas as exe­cu­tion meth­ods. The DOJ char­ac­ter­izes the Biden Administration’s mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions as​“an unprece­dent­ed break from the [DOJ]’s long­stand­ing approach to the death penal­ty,” while cast­ing this new effort as a return to form. The DOJ fur­ther claims that the three…

Today, the state of Texas plans to exe­cute James Broadnax, a Black man who chal­lenged the state for its dis­crim­i­na­to­ry use of peremp­to­ry strikes to exclude every Black juror at his tri­al, in vio­la­tion of the U.S. Supreme Court’s land­mark deci­sion in Batson v. Kentucky (1986). Barring a last-minute stay, Mr. Broadnax’s exe­cu­tion will coin­cide with the 40^th anniver­sary of Batson that put race at the fore­front of the jury selec­tion process. Racial bias in jury selection…