Publications & Testimony

Expressing the hope​“that we’ll be able to cel­e­brate very soon, togeth­er with the American peo­ple, the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in the United States,” European Union Ambassador to the United States Stavros Lambrinidis opened the EU in the USA and Council of the Europe​’s vir­tu­al com­mem­o­ra­tion of World and European Day Against the…

A Wyoming woman whose moth­er and hus­band were mur­dered in sep­a­rate inci­dents is call­ing on the state to repeal its death penal­ty for the ben­e­fit of victims’…

In his first inter­view since his September 24, 2020 exon­er­a­tion, for­mer Mississippi death-row pris­on­er Curtis Flowers (pic­tured) spoke with In the Dark pod­cast host and lead reporter Madeleine Baran about his 24-year jour­ney to free­dom after hav­ing being framed, tried six times, sent to death row and final­ly freed for a mur­der every­one involved knew full well he had…

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment intends to con­tin­ue its unprece­dent­ed exe­cu­tion spree into December, sched­ul­ing the exe­cu­tions of the first woman and the youngest offend­er put to death by fed­er­al author­i­ties in near­ly sev­en decades. In a Friday evening announce­ment, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on October 16, 2020 that it had set the exe­cu­tion of Lisa Montgomery (pic­tured) for December 8 and Brandon Bernard…

NEWS (10/​16/​20) — Texas: A divid­ed Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has upheld Kousol Chanthakoummane’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence, which he argued had been obtained with junk bite mark tes­ti­mo­ny, hyp­no­tized wit­ness­es, and questionable…

A divid­ed Ohio Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeals of two death-row pris­on­ers who are chal­leng­ing the legal­i­ty of the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. By votes of 4 – 3, the court on October 13, 2020 accept­ed for review appeals by Cleveland Jackson (pic­tured) and James O’Neal assert­ing that Ohio’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col is invalid because the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) adopt­ed it in violation…

In the October 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, for­mer Illinois Governor George Ryan speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about the events that per­suad­ed him to com­mute the death sen­tences of all 167 death-row pris­on­ers in Illinois in 2003. Ryan and Dunham delve into the Governor’s jour­ney from death-penal­­ty sup­port­er as an Illinois state leg­is­la­tor to death-penal­­ty oppo­nent as Illinois gov­er­nor, and…

A fed­er­al dis­trict court judge has issued an order mov­ing clos­er to tri­al a law­suit filed against a Utah coun­ty for the alleged retal­ia­to­ry fir­ing of a lawyer who had pub­licly crit­i­cized the coun­ty for refus­ing to ade­quate­ly fund his client’s death-penalty…

Federal pros­e­cu­tors have filed a peti­tion in the U.S. Supreme Court ask­ing the Court to review a fed­er­al appeals court rul­ing that over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (pic­tured) in the 2013 Boston…

A recent U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion that affirmed the sov­er­eign­ty of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation over trib­al lands that span much of the east­ern half of Oklahoma con­tin­ues to rever­ber­ate through the state’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem as pris­on­ers sen­tenced for mur­ders com­mit­ted by or against Native Americans on trib­al lands chal­lenge the state’s author­i­ty to have…