Publications & Testimony

A new papal encycli­cal let­ter tells Catholics around the world that “[t]here can be no step­ping back” from the Church’s for­mal oppo­si­tion to the death…

The Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) have issued new reports doc­u­ment­ing the con­tin­u­ing his­toric decline of the death penal­ty across the United…

NEWS (10/​1/​20) — Washington, D.C.: The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has sched­uled an eighth exe­cu­tion for 2020, set­ting a November 19 exe­cu­tion date for Orlando Hall. Hall’s case would be the first fed­er­al exe­cu­tion in more than a half-cen­tu­ry for the killing of an African-American vic­tim and the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive exe­cu­tion of an African-American pris­on­er after the exe­cu­tions of five white pris­on­ers and the sole Native American on…

For sec­ond time in eight days, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has reversed course after ini­tial­ly reject­ing a death-row prisoner’s claim of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and has resen­tenced the pris­on­er to life. The deci­sions, both involv­ing for­eign nation­als and both sup­port­ed by local pros­e­cu­tors, marked the sixth and sev­enth time that Texas courts have vacat­ed death sen­tences imposed on intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled cap­i­tal defen­dants since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017…

In the September 30, 2020 episode of the Discussions With DPIC pod­cast, Native American Rights Fund senior staff attor­ney Joel Williams joins Death Penalty Information Center exec­u­tive direc­tor Robert Dunham for a con­ver­sa­tion about trib­al sov­er­eign­ty, the death penal­ty, and the his­toric U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing in McGirt v.

A self-described tough-on-crime Oklahoma state rep­re­sen­ta­tive says has seri­ous doubts as to the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the Sooner State’s death…

The Republic of Kazakhstan has joined the ranks of nations that have for­mal­ly com­mit­ted to abol­ish­ing the death…

The North Carolina Supreme Court has ordered that three African American death-row pris­on­ers who had proven that their death sen­tences vio­lat­ed the state’s since repealed Racial Justice Act (RJA) must be resen­tenced to life impris­on­ment with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. In three deci­sions issued on September 25, 2020, the court ruled that North Carolina had vio­lat­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ples of dou­ble jeop­ardy and the pro­hi­bi­tions against after-the-fact…