Publications & Testimony

Saying that “[l]ethal injec­tion appears to us to be impos­si­ble from a prac­ti­cal point of view today,” Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (pic­tured) told reporters it is ​“pret­ty clear” that the state will not exe­cute anyone in…

Just hours after tak­ing office, new­ly elect­ed Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón issued a series of sweep­ing changes that end­ed new death-penal­ty pros­e­cu­tions and moved towards recon­sid­er­ing exist­ing death sen­tences in the coun­ty with the nation’s largest death row. The pol­i­cy changes sig­naled the poten­tial nation­wide impact of local pros­e­cu­tor elec­tions in 2020, as new reform pros­e­cu­tors pre­pare to take the helm in coun­ties that con­sti­tute more than…

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment car­ried out back-to-back exe­cu­tions of Brandon Bernard and Alfred Bourgeois on December 10 and 11, 2020, cap­ping the dead­liest run of fed­er­al exe­cu­tions in the United States in the 20^th and 21^st cen­turies. According to the Espy file, a data­base of exe­cu­tions in the U.S. and its colonies between 1608 and 2002, the ten exe­cu­tions since July 14 con­sti­tute the most fed­er­al civil­ian exe­cu­tions in a cal­en­dar year since the federal government…

Eight mem­bers of the fed­er­al Bureau of Prisons (BOP) exe­cu­tion team and a reli­gious advi­sor have test­ed pos­i­tive for the coro­n­avirus after par­tic­i­pat­ing in the November 19 exe­cu­tion of Orlando Hall (pic­tured). The COVID-19 infec­tions, which fed­er­al author­i­ties had not pre­vi­ous­ly revealed, came to light in doc­u­ments pro­duced in a law­suit two pris­on­ers have filed to halt the remaining federal…

In the December 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, anes­the­si­ol­o­gist Dr. Joel Zivot from Emory University Hospital speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about his dis­cov­er­ies from the autop­sies of more than 200 exe­cut­ed pris­on­ers. Those autop­sies revealed the grue­some effects of exe­cu­tion by lethal injec­tion and shat­tered the pop­u­lar myth that lethal injec­tion is a humane and pain­less exe­cu­tion process. Zivot and Dunham also…

As the December 10, 2020 exe­cu­tion date of fed­er­al death-row pris­on­er Brandon Bernard (pic­tured with his fam­i­ly) approached, jurors and a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor in his case came for­ward say­ing that the teen offender’s life should be spared. Bernard, who was 18 years old at the time of the offense, became the youngest offend­er exe­cut­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in at least 68…

Saying ​“our nation’s long exper­i­ment with the death penal­ty has failed,” a coali­tion of near­ly 100 crim­i­nal jus­tice offi­cials is call­ing on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to halt the five exe­cu­tions cur­rent­ly sched­uled for December 2020 and January 2021 and to end its use of the death…