Publications & Testimony

The number of people under sentence of death in the United States has fallen below 2,500 for the first time in 29 years following twenty consecutive years of decline, according to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). In a new report, Capital Punishment, 2020 – Statistical Tables, released December 10, 2021, BJS says that 2,469 people were under sentence of death in the custody of 28 states and the federal government as of December 31, 2020, down 3.7% from the…

The United States Supreme Court heard oral argument on December 8, 2021 in a case that will have serious implications for the right to federal court review of wrongful convictions and death sentences. Arizona has asked the Supreme Court to reverse federal appellate court rulings in favor of Barry Jones and David Ramirez. The Court seemed skeptical of Arizona’s argument that even though the state provided ineffective counsel to represent prisoners in state courts, federal courts must ignore…

As South Carolina prepares procedures for carrying out executions via firing squad, an investigation by Columbia’s daily newspaper, The State, reports that important information about the execution process and the sources of materials to be used in executions is being hidden from the public. The state legislature passed a bill in May 2021 making the firing squad and electric chair the two means of execution in the state. However, the state has denied journalists’ requests for information about…

Oklahoma executed Bigler Jobe Stouffer II (pictured, at his clemency hearing) on December 9, 2021, after Governor Kevin Stitt rejecting a pardons board recommendation to commute his sentence to life without parole and the federal courts denied his applications to stay his execution. Stouffer, 79, was the oldest prisoner put to death in Oklahoma. It was the eleventh and final execution of 2021. On November 17, 2021, the Oklahoma Pardons and Parole board voted 3 – 2 to recommend clemency for…

Organizations advocating for the rights of abused children and those with mental illness and for fair process are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to, for a second time, summarily reverse a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) decision that upheld the death sentence imposed on Terence Andrus (pictured) despite defense counsel’s failure to investigate and present a “tidal wave” of available mitigating evidence in the penalty phase of his capital trial. In June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court…

The Oklahoma Attorney General’s office has agreed to a stay of execution for a severely mentally ill death-row prisoner who may be incompetent to be executed, while the state’s Pardon and Parole Board denied clemency to two other prisoners set to be put to death in Oklahoma’s five-month scheduled execution spree. After hearing testimony on November 29, 2021 that Wade Lay experiences paranoid delusions from schizophrenia that leave him without a rational understanding of the reason for his…

In the December 2021 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Death Penalty Information Center Deputy Director Ngozi Ndulue interviews State Representative Jean Schmidt (pictured) about her work as a primary sponsor of a bill in the Ohio House of Representatives that would abolish capital punishment in the state. A long-time Republican elected official, Rep. Schmidt also served in the U.S. House of Representatives for ten years. She avidly supported the death penalty early in her career but now is an…

More than 2,000 cities across the world lit up monuments on November 30, 2021 in a global demonstration to raise awareness about the death penalty. The international campaign — called “Cities for Life” — was organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio, a lay Catholic association dedicated to social service. Buildings in 2,446 cities, including the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, were lit in protest of the death penalty and in support of the sanctity of life. Four United States cities…

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to consider Arizona prosecutors’ challenge to federal appellate court rulings allowing the consideration of evidence that was undeveloped in state court due to ineffective representation. The state seeks to overturn rulings in favor of Arizona death-row prisoners Barry Jones and David Ramirez. The men’s cases will be heard together as Shinn v. Ramirez and Jones on December 8, 2021. In federal habeas corpus proceedings, Jones and Ramirez argued that…

The sister of a terminally ill death-row prisoner who has been in hospice care since 2019 has asked the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole to recommend that he be granted clemency so he can “die on God’s time.” In emotional testimony presented virtually on November 30, 2021, Angelinna Pizzuto told the parole board members that her brother, Gerald Pizzuto, Jr. (pictured), had been repeatedly beaten and raped by their stepfather throughout his childhood, and that social service agencies had…