Articles

In her chap­ter of the new­ly pub­lished book Neuroscience in Criminal Justice Systems: The Positive Impact of Neurojustice, Fordham Law Professor and Founding Director of the Neuroscience and Law Center Deborah Denno explores the use of neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence in crim­i­nal cas­es involv­ing brain injury, both from exter­nal caus­es (e.g., car acci­dents or gun­shot wounds) and inter­nal caus­es (e.g., demen­tia or alco­hol-induced brain dam­age). The chap­ter titled,​“The…

“We don’t need more death. We need more care.” — Anna Lee, vic­tim fam­i­ly mem­ber — In a December 9, 2025, opin­ion arti­cle in The Tennessean, Anna Lee, a mur­der-vic­­tim fam­i­ly mem­ber whose beloved great-uncle’s killer, Nick Sutton, was exe­cut­ed six years ago explains how the death penal­ty has not brought her fam­i­ly heal­ing or jus­tice. In the piece, Ms. Lee com­pas­sion­ate­ly describes the long-term emo­tion­al and finan­cial toll the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment system imposes…

On November 19, 2025, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released Fatal Flaws: Innocence, Race and Wrongful Convictions, the sec­ond install­ment in its mul­ti-part series exam­in­ing racial­ized and struc­tur­al fail­ures in the nation’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. The first report of the series, Fatal Flaws: Revealing the Racial and Religious Gerrymandering of the Capital Jury, explored how the process of death qual­i­fi­ca­tion dis­torts the com­po­si­tion of capital juries.

The American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section has released its annu­al report, The State of Criminal Justice 2021, exam­in­ing major issues, trends, and sig­nif­i­cant changes in America’s criminal…

For the first time in its his­to­ry, National Geographic mag­a­zine has tack­led the sub­ject of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Sentenced to death, but inno­cent, a fea­ture sto­ry in the March 2021 issue of the mag­a­zine, chron­i­cles the sto­ries of fif­teen death-row exonerees and illu­mi­nates the per­va­sive issue of inno­cence and the death penal­ty in the United States. The arti­cle, released on the same day as the Death Penalty Information Center’s new…

The American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section has released The State of Criminal Justice 2020, its annu­al report on issues, trends, and sig­nif­i­cant changes in America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The ABA book includes a chap­ter on sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment devel­op­ments over the past year, authored by Ronald J. Tabak, chair of the Death Penalty Committee of the ABA’s Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice.

As the death penal­ty con­tin­ues to wilt across the coun­try, what­ev­er peno­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion it once pur­port­ed­ly served is dying as well, say cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment schol­ars Carol Steiker and Jordan Steiker (pic­tured). In their new arti­cle The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of the Death Penalty in the United States in the January 2020 Annual Review of Criminology, the Steikers exam­ine four cen­tral issues in the rise and fall…

A bipar­ti­san coali­tion of Wyoming leg­is­la­tors has intro­duced a bill to abol­ish the state’s death penal­ty. On January 15, 2019, Cheyenne Republican State Representative Jared Olsen (pic­tured, left) and Republican State Senator Brian Boner (pic­tured, right), intro­duced HB145, which would repeal the death penal­ty and replace it with a judi­cial­ly imposed sen­tence of life with­out parole or life impris­on­ment. The bill,…

On January 11, 2019, the Florida Clemency Board unan­i­mous­ly grant­ed posthu­mous par­dons to the​“Groveland Four,” four young African-American men false­ly accused of rap­ing a young white woman in Lake County, Florida in 1949. During the racist hys­te­ria fol­low­ing the accu­sa­tion, white mobs burned down black res­i­dences, a mas­sive white posse lynched a black sus­pect, all-white juries con­demned two innocent men…