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: 1071 — 1080
Feb 07, 2022
Idaho Court Rules Governor Lacked Authority to Reject Commutation of Gerald Pizzuto’s Death Sentence
An Idaho trial court judge has resentenced Gerald Pizzuto, Jr. to life without parole, ruling that Governor Brad Little lacked legal authority to reject the state Commission of Pardons and Parole’s recommendation of clemency for the 65-year-old terminally ill death-row prisoner. In a nineteen-page decision, issued February 4, 2022, Second Judicial District Court Judge Jay Gaskill held that the Idaho state constitution vests exclusive power over commutation decisions in the Commission of…
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Feb 04, 2022
Melissa Lucio’s Daughter Death May Have Been Accidental. Texas Has Scheduled Her Execution for April 27
The state of Texas has issued a death warrant seeking to execute Melissa Lucio (pictured), a battered woman who was sentenced to death for what may have been an accidental fall that killed her two-year-old daughter. She is scheduled to be executed April 27, 2022. In an interview with the Texas Observer, Tivon Schardl, a lawyer on Lucio’s appellate defense team, called her case “as clear a case of injustice as you’ll ever see.” “Melissa Lucio faces imminent execution for a capital murder that…
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Feb 03, 2022
New Poll: Voters Overwhelmingly Oppose Las Vegas DA Seeking the Death Penalty Against Vulnerable and Impaired Persons
Likely voters in Clark County, Nevada overwhelmingly oppose the use of capital punishment against broad categories of vulnerable and impaired persons whom county prosecutors have been trying to execute, a new poll released by Vegas Watch on January 27, 2022 shows. The poll, conducted by the Justice Research Group from December 1 to 13, 2021, found a significant disconnect between voters’ views on capital punishment and the practices of Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson (pictured).
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Feb 02, 2022
Judge Resentences Pervis Payne to Concurrent Life Terms, Making Him Eligible for Parole in Five Years After 34 Years on Tennessee’s Death Row
A Memphis judge has resentenced Pervis Payne to two concurrent life sentences, making the former Tennessee death-row prisoner who has long maintained his innocence eligible to apply for parole in five years. The sentencing order, issued by Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Paula Skahan on January 31, 2022, follows decades of litigation over whether Payne, who is intellectually disabled, was even subject to the death penalty. County prosecutors fought to execute Payne for more than three…
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Feb 01, 2022
California Governor Gavin Newsom Orders Dismantling of State’s Death Row
California’s death row — the largest in the country — will be dismantled within two years, Governor Gavin Newsom announced on January 31, 2022. Under Newsom’s plan, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) will transfer the men on death row in San Quentin State Prison to other maximum security state prisons. San Quentin’s death row will be repurposed and transformed “into something innovative and anchored in rehabilitation,” corrections’ spokeswoman Vicky Waters told…
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Jan 31, 2022
Justice Stephen Breyer, Pragmatic Jurist Who Doubted Constitutionality of Capital Punishment, to Retire from Supreme Court
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer (pictured), whose growing doubts about capital punishment led him to question its constitutionality, is retiring after 28 years on the Court. The 83-year-old justice formally announced his retirement in a January 27, 2022 letter to President Joe Biden, saying that he will step down “when the Court rises for the summer recess this year … assuming that by then my successor has been nominated and confirmed.” Biden said the same day that he intends to…
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Jan 28, 2022
Divided Supreme Court Vacates Injunction, Permits Alabama to Execute Intellectually Disabled Prisoner
A divided U.S. Supreme Court voted 5 – 4 on January 27, 2022 to allow Alabama to execute an intellectually disabled death-row prisoner, vacating an injunction issued by a federal district court on January 7 and unanimously upheld by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on January 26. In a decision rendered 1½ hours after the execution of Matthew Reeves was scheduled to begin, the five conservative male justices on the Court voted, without explanation, to let the…
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Jan 27, 2022
Oklahoma Executes Donald Grant: First U.S. Execution of 2022 is 43rd from County with Most Executions Outside Texas
Oklahoma carried out the first execution of 2022 in the U.S. on January 27, injecting Donald Grant (pictured, at his clemency hearing) with a three-drug chemical cocktail whose constitutionality is the subject of a pending federal trial. Grant, whose execution drew international attention because of his serious mental illness, was pronounced dead at 10:16 a.m. local time. Grant is the 43rd person capitally prosecuted in Oklahoma County to be put to death since executions resumed in the U.S. in…
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Jan 26, 2022
Kansas Supreme Court Rules that Death Penalty Does Not Violate State Constitution’s ‘Inalienable’ Right to Life
The Kansas Supreme Court has upheld the state’s death penalty against two death-row prisoners’ challenges that capital punishment violates the “inalienable” right to life enshrined in the Kansas state constitution. In separate decisions rendered in the cases of brothers Reginald and Jonathan Carr on January 21, 2022, the court held that the right to life guaranteed in Section 1 of the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights “is not absolute or nonforfeitable” and is forfeited “once a defendant…
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Jan 25, 2022
Clinton Young Free Pending Retrial After 20 Years on Texas Death Row
Former Texas death-row prisoner Clinton Young has been released from custody nearly twenty years after being sentenced to death for a double murder he has consistently said he did not commit. Young, pictured with Clinton Young Foundation Legal Director Merel Pontier after his release, walked out of the Midland County Detention Center January 21, 2022, after the foundation posted bond to secure his freedom while prosecutors from neighboring Dawson County decide whether to retry Young on the…
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