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: 1081 — 1090
Jan 24, 2022
Capital Case Roundup — Florida Supreme Court Grants New Trials in Two Death Penalty Cases
On January 13, 2022, the Florida Supreme Court granted new trials to two Florida death-row prisoners. The court overturned Joe Simpson’s 2007 conviction and death sentence because of prosecutorial misconduct. It also overturned Peter Avsenew’s 2018 conviction and death sentence because of the improper presentation of remotely-recorded testimony. Simpson was sentenced to death in 2007 for the murders of Archie Howard Crook, Sr. and his pregnant girlfriend, Kimberli Kimbler in 1999. In a 5 – 1…
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Jan 24, 2022
Citing ‘Christian Values,’ Papua New Guinea Abolishes the Death Penalty
Citing its “Christian values” and the unavailability of any humane means to carry out executions, Papua New Guinea has abolished capital punishment. On January 20, 2022, the PNG parliament voted to repeal the nation’s 30-year-old death penalty statute and replace capital punishment with a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. “For us as a Christian nation,” Prime Minister James Marape (pictured) said, “the notion of ‘thou shall not kill’ still prevails.” The death penalty…
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Jan 21, 2022
Investigative Report: Idaho Records Reveal State’s Efforts to Conceal Ghost Purchase of Execution Drugs and Out-of-State Cash Payment to Pharmacy With Dubious Regulatory History
Idaho prison officials engaged in cloak and dagger practices, including twice sending state employees across state lines to make cash purchases of controlled substances intended for executions, actively concealing the intended use of the drugs, manipulating state records to cover up their activities, and acting in bad faith to stonewall public records requests for execution-related information, a joint investigative report by the Idaho Statesman and the Idaho Capital Sun has revealed. Records…
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Jan 20, 2022
U.S. Supreme Court to Review Two More Cases on Death-Row Prisoners’ Access to Federal Courts
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review two cases concerning the scope of death-row prisoners’ access to the federal courts in litigating the constitutionality of their convictions and sentences or the method by which states seek to execute them. On January 14, 2022, the Court granted certiorari in Nance v. Ward and Shoop v. Twyford. Nance is a Georgia death penalty case concerning the process by which prisoners may bring challenges to state execution practices. Shoop is an Ohio death…
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Jan 19, 2022
Republican Legislators Introduce Bill to Repeal and Replace Utah’s Death Penalty
Two conservative Republican legislators, both former supporters of capital punishment, have introduced legislation that would end death-penalty prosecutions in Utah. On January 18, 2022, the first day of the three-month 2022 legislative session in the deeply conservative state, State Representative V. Lowry Snow (pictured, left) and Senator Daniel McCay (pictured, right) introduced HB 147, which would prohibit the death penalty for aggravated murders committed after May 4, 2022 and for all…
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Jan 18, 2022
Chairman of Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Parole Forced Out Over Support for Death-Row Prisoners’ Clemency Petitions
Adam Luck (pictured), the Chairman of Oklahoma’s Board of Pardons and Parole, has resigned from the board under pressure from Governor Kevin Stitt because of Luck’s votes in favor of clemency for death-row prisoners. “When I began service on this board there was a moratorium on executions in the state of Oklahoma,” Luck wrote in his January 14, 2022 resignation letter to Stitt. “As we resumed executions in October I came to the conclusion that guided my votes during the five clemency hearings…
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Jan 17, 2022
MLK Day 2022: The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the Death Penalty
On Martin Luther King Day, DPIC looks at the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s views on capital punishment. In a November 1957 article in Ebony, Dr. King was asked “Do you think God approves the death penalty for crimes like rape and murder?” He responded, “I do not think that God approves the death penalty for any crime, rape and murder included…. Capital punishment is against the better judgment of modern criminology, and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of…
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Jan 14, 2022
Commentary: ‘Southern Pride,’ White Mob Mentality, and the Death Penalty
The same brand of Southern pride that inspired lynchings after the U.S. Civil War fuels support for the death penalty today, writes legal analyst Joia Erin Thornton (pictured) in a commentary on the web publication, Blavity. In The Dark Southern Pride Upholding The Barbaric Death Penalty, published December 23, 2021, Thornton argues that, just as Southern states in Reconstruction turned to extreme carceral punishments to reimpose violent control over Black Americans after the abolition of…
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Jan 13, 2022
New Study: Kentucky Death Penalty Racially Biased, Arbitrary, Error Prone
Kentucky’s death penalty is racially discriminatory, geographically arbitrary, and riddled with systemic flaws, a new study of the commonwealth’s use of capital punishment has found. The study, A Statistical Overview of the Kentucky Death Penalty, by University of North Carolina political scientist Frank R. Baumgartner, examined Kentucky’s use of the death penalty from 1975, when its current system was implemented, to the present. Prof. Baumgartner released his analysis of the results on…
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Jan 12, 2022
DPIC Podcast: Contra Costa District Attorney Diana Becton on Bringing Fairness and Equity to Criminal Legal Reform and Ending the Death Penalty
In the January 2022 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Contra Costa County, California District Attorney Diana Becton (pictured), speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about the rise in reform prosecutors across the country, the inherent flaws in capital punishment that led her to work alongside other reform prosecutors to end the death penalty, and her efforts as district attorney to bring fairness and equity to the criminal legal system. Becton is the…
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