Publications & Testimony
Testimony and Statements on the Death Penalty
FROM DPIC
For testimony by former Executive Director Robert Dunham and former Executive Director Richard C. Dieter, please visit our page DPIC Testimony.
FROM RELIGIOUS LEADERS AND ORGANIZATIONS
- News Brief: Pope Francis Calls for Prayer to Abolish the Death Penalty (September 1, 2022)
- Jewish Congregation Renews Request for Department of Justice to Drop Death Penalty in Tree of Life Synagogue Killings (June 24, 2021)
- Orthodox Church Patriarch Calls Death Penalty Incompatible with Christian Beliefs (October 20, 2020)
- Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — Statement on the Federal Death Penalty (August 5, 2019)
- Louisiana Christian Faith Leaders Call for State to Abolish Death Penalty (April 25, 2019)
- Pittsburgh Rabbi’s Wife Opposes Death Penalty for Tree of Life Synagogue Killings (March 18, 2019)
- Orthodox Jewish Organization Calls for an End to Capital Punishment in the U.S. | Death Penalty Information Center (February 17, 2016)
- Baptist Theologian Says Death Penalty Does Not Fit With Christian Theology (March 8, 2016)
- Civil and Human Rights: Death Penalty — Church & Society, The United Methodist Church
- Religious Views: Over 150 Catholic Theologians Call for Repeal of the Death Penalty (September 27, 2011)
- Power Over Life and Death — The Power to Save a Life (January 15, 2005)
- Responsibility, Rehabilitation, and Restoration: A Catholic Perspective on Crime and Criminal Justice (November 2000)
- The Challenge of Holiness: A Sermon on the Death Penalty (January 10, 2000)
- General Assembly of the Texas Conference of Churches — Resolution Opposing the Death Penalty (February 24, 1998)
- Statement by Catholic Bishops of Texas on Capital Punishment (October 20, 1997)
- Catholic Church Expresses Strong Opposition to Capital Punishment in Catechism (September 9, 1997)
- Catholic Bishops of Iowa Issue Statement on Death Penalty (February 4, 1998)
- To End the Death Penalty: A Report of the National Jewish/Catholic Consultation
- Transcript of Dr. Pat Robertson’s Speech on the Role of Religion and the Death Penalty at The College of William and Mary
- Collection of Official Catholic Statements on the Death Penalty (1980)
FROM THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
- UN experts call for universal abolition of the death penalty | OHCHR (October 9, 2023)
- Zambia Becomes 25th Sub-Saharan African Nation to Abolish Death Penalty (December 23, 2022)
- Belgium Wants a World Without the Death Penalty (October 20, 2022)
- As France Prepares to Assume Presidency of European Union, Emmanuel Macron Announces Initiative for Worldwide Abolition of Death Penalty (October 11, 2021)
- U.N. Secretary-General, European Union Ambassador Call for Abolition of “Barbaric” Death Penalty (October 11, 2017)
- European Union Calls for Abolition of Capital Punishment as World Coalition Hosts International Death Penalty Conference (June 27, 2017)
- U.N. Investigator Talks About the Future of Solitary and the Death Penalty (November 7, 2016)
- World Congress Against the Death Penalty Renews Call for Global Moratorium, Pope Sends Message of Support (June 27, 2016)
- Declaration by the Presidency on behalf of the European Union on the 400th execution in Texas from the Council of the European Union (August 21, 2007)
- Resolution Supporting Worldwide Moratorium on Executions from the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (April 1999)
- Mary Robinson, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights — Message to the Press Conference organized by the Death Penalty Information Center for the release of the report, “International Perspectives on the Death Penalty” (October 12, 1999)
- Status of the International Covenants on Human Rights from the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (April 1998)
FROM ADVOCACY GROUPS
- Advocacy Group Tells Supreme Court that Negative Stereotypes Distort Perception that Latinos in Death-Penalty Cases Pose Future Danger to Society (April 15, 2022)
- Disability Rights Groups, Legal Experts, and Conservative Advocates Urge Supreme Court to Strike Down Georgia’s Uniquely Harsh Proof Requirements in Death-Penalty Intellectual Disabilities Cases (January 11, 2022)
- NAACP Reaffirms Its Support of Abolishing the Death Penalty (2022)
- More Than 80 Civil Rights and Advocacy Organizations Urge President Biden to End Federal Executions | Death Penalty Information Center (February 9, 2021)
- More Than 250 Conservative Leaders Join Call to End Death Penalty (October 29, 2019)
- National Alliance on Mental Illness: The Death Penalty
- Florida League of Women Voters Calls for Halt to Executions (May 28, 2007)
- Victims Organizations Issue Joint Statement for National Victims’ Rights Week (April 19, 2007)
FROM JUDGES, LEGISLATORS, AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS
- Republican-led Oklahoma committee considers pause on executions amid death case scrutiny (October 5, 2023)
- Former Pro-Death Penalty District Attorney Explains Why He Now Supports Abolition, and Fears Political Promises to Expand the Use of the Death Penalty (August 20, 2023)
- Pressley, Durbin Reintroduce Bill to End the Federal Death Penalty (July 13, 2023)
- The Lancet Editorial: Physician Involvement in Executions Violates Medical Ethics | Death Penalty Information Center (May 20, 2023)
- APA calls for extending ineligibility for the death penalty to adolescent offenders younger than age 21 (August 4, 2022)
- Why some Republicans are turning against the death penalty | Ron Ferguson | Ohio House of Representatives (March 8, 2022)
- Eight years on Texas’ highest criminal court turned Elsa Alcala into a death penalty skeptic. How will the court change without her? (January 26, 2019)
- AMA to Supreme Court: Doctor participation in executions unethical (August 22, 2018)
- Former Governor Bill Richardson: Death Penalty Is Bad for Business, Out of Step With World’s Views (June 16, 2017)
- Capital Punishment and Nurses’ Participation in Capital Punishment (2016)
- Former Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro Says Death Penalty Unfixable, “Not Worth It Any More” (September 12, 2016)
- Resolution Supporting Repeal of the Death Penalty, National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators (August 11, 2016)
- Retired Police Captain Says Repealing Death Penalty Is “Smart on Crime” (November 24, 2014)
- Resolution Supporting Abolition of the Death Penalty, Natl. Assoc. of Black Psychologists (2012)
- The Road to Justice and Peace by New Jersey State Senator Raymond Lesniak (February 1, 2009)
- Statement On The Federal Death Penalty System by Senator Feingold (June 7, 2001)
- Statement on the Need for a Federal Moratorium on the Death Penalty Senator Feingold (October 29, 2000)
- Death Penalty: The Torah and Today (August 23, 2000)
- Press Release for Senator Russ Feingold’s Introduction of Senate’s First Death Penalty Moratorium Bill (April 20, 2000)
- Amnesty International Southern Regional Conference: Orlando, Florida Remarks by Former Florida Chief Justice Gerald Kogan (October 23, 1999)
- American Bar Association Resolution on the Death Penalty (February 3, 1997)
FROM MURDER VICTIMS’ FAMILY MEMBERS
Items: 991 — 1000
May 19, 2022
Expert Calls Arizona’s First Execution in Eight Years ‘Botched’ After Witnesses Report Problems Inserting IV
In an execution an expert has characterized as “botched,“ Arizona Department of Corrections personnel failed for 25 minutes to set an intravenous line in Clarence Dixon’s arms on May 11, 2022 before performing a bloody and apparently unauthorized “cutdown“ procedure to insert the IV line into a vein in his groin. It was the first execution the state had carried out after a nearly eight-year hiatus following the botched two-hour execution of Joseph Wood on July 23, 2014. Fox News media witness…
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May 18, 2022
Alabama Appeals Court Rules Trial Court Did Not Abuse Discretion in Denying New Trial for Death-Row Prisoner Toforest Johnson
Ignoring entreaties from judges, prosecutors, and state bar presidents, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals has denied a new trial to death-row prisoner Toforest Johnson. On May 6, 2022, the state appeals court ruled that Johnson (pictured, center, in a family photo) was not entitled to relief on his claim that prosecutors in his 1998 trial in Birmingham withheld evidence of a payment to a key witness in exchange for her testimony. Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder…
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May 17, 2022
Fallout From Aborted Tennessee Execution: Prosecutors Misrepresented Facts in Federal Lawsuit, 2 Members of Execution Team Knew Drugs Had Not Been Tested
The fallout following Tennessee’s aborted attempt to execute Oscar Smith on April 21, 2022 continues to grow, as state prosecutors disclosed that their pleadings had misrepresented facts in a federal lethal injection lawsuit and public records revealed that at least two members of the execution team knew the day before Smith was to be executed that the drugs purchased to put Smith to death had not been properly tested. Redacted records obtained by several media outlets on May 13, 2022 in…
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May 16, 2022
Federal Appeals Court Rules that Louisiana Prosecutor and Police Officer Who Fabricated Evidence are Not Immune from Civil Rights Lawsuit by Former Death-Row Prisoner
A prosecutor and police officer who fabricated evidence to wrongfully convict a former Louisiana death-row prisoner are not entitled to immunity in a lawsuit alleging they “knowingly and deliberately fabricated” that testimony, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled. Michael Wearry, a Louisiana prisoner whose conviction and death sentence were overturned by the U.S Supreme Court in 2016 because prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence, had filed suit in 2018 against Livingston…
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May 14, 2022
Kareem Jackson Receives Fourth Execution Reprieve in Ohio, Execution Date Re-Set for 2025
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has issued a reprieve to death-row prisoner Kareem Jackson, calling off his scheduled September 15, 2022 execution and setting a new December 10, 2025 execution date. In a news release, the governor’s office said that the reprieve had been issued “due to ongoing problems involving the willingness of pharmaceutical suppliers to provide drugs to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC), pursuant to DRC protocol, without endangering other Ohioans.”
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May 13, 2022
Georgia Allegedly Violated Pandemic Agreement By Scheduling Execution of Virgil Presnell
Attorneys for Georgia death-row prisoner Virgil Presnell, Jr. (pictured left, with his mother) have filed a lawsuit arguing that Attorney General Chris Carr violated a written agreement when his office set a May 17, 2022 execution date for their client. Executions in Georgia have been on hold since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2021, Carr agreed not to set any execution dates until three conditions had been met: the expiration of the Georgia Supreme Court’s COVID-19 judicial…
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May 12, 2022
‘Every Option Will Be on the Table’: Republican Leader of Texas House Justice Reform Caucus Says He Would Support Moratorium on Executions
Saying that recent events in Texas’ attempt to execute death-row prisoner Melissa Lucio had shaken his faith in the criminal legal system, an influential Republican state legislator has said that he would now support a moratorium on executions in the state. In an April 29, 2022 interview on WFAA-TV’s Inside Texas Politics with Jason Whitely, Representative Jeff Leach (pictured), co-chair of the Texas House of Representatives’ bi-partisan Criminal Justice Reform Caucus, said “every option [for…
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May 11, 2022
New DPIC Podcast: 35 Years After Controversial Supreme Court Decision, Prof. Alexis Hoag Discusses McCleskey v. Kemp’s Legacy
In the May 2022 episode of Discussions With DPIC, Professor Alexis Hoag (pictured) of Brooklyn Law School joined DPIC Deputy Director Ngozi Ndulue for a wide-ranging conversation marking the 35th anniversary of McCleskey v. Kemp, a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision that rejected a constitutional challenge to the death penalty that showed strong statistical evidence of racial disparities in capital prosecutions and death sentences. Professor Hoag, formerly an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense…
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May 10, 2022
ACLU Review of Quintin Jones Execution Documents Finds Texas “Woefully Unprepared to Carry Out an Execution”
Documents that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) withheld from public disclosure for months reveal that “confusion and lack of training” have left the state “woefully unprepared to carry out an execution,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union. On June 4, 2021, the ACLU filed a request with TDCJ for records related to the state’s May 19, 2021 execution of Quintin Jones, in which the execution team failed to bring media witnesses into the chamber. The execution, which…
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May 09, 2022
Poll: Support for Death Penalty in Louisiana Falls By 7 Percentage Points in 4 Years
Support for capital punishment in Louisiana has fallen by seven percentage points in the last four years, according to the 2022 Louisiana Survey by the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs at Louisiana State University. “Four years ago supporters of the death penalty outnumbered opponents by 24 points, today that difference is only 13 points,” Mike Henderson, Associate Professor at the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication and principal author of the report on the survey, said. 51% of…
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