Publications & Testimony

NEWS (6/​12/​20) — Texas: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit lift­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion the fed­er­al dis­trict court had grant­ed to Ruben Gutierrez. The action reac­ti­vates the death war­rant sched­ul­ing Mr. Gutierrez’s execution…

NEWS (6/​11/​20) — Florida: The Florida Supreme Court applied new cas­es that retroac­tive­ly changed the law regard­ing claims of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of death sen­tences imposed after non-unan­i­­mous jury votes for death to uphold the death sen­tences imposed on Alphonso Cave and Gary…

A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has doc­u­ment­ed a strong link between indi­vid­u­als who hold dehu­man­iz­ing belief sys­tems and support for…

Florida death-row exoneree Clifford Williams, Jr. (pic­tured), who was freed in 2019 after spend­ing 43 years in prison, will receive $2.15 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion from the state of Florida under a bill signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis on June 9, 2020. The bill, specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored to com­pen­sate Williams, unan­i­mous­ly passed both cham­bers of the Florida…

Bobby Moore (pic­tured), the man at the cen­ter of a case that altered how Texas deter­mines intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty in death-penal­­ty cas­es, has been grant­ed parole after spend­ing 40 years in prison. He served near­ly all of that sentence on…

Twenty-eight years after Philadelphia pros­e­cu­tors first sought to take his life for the mur­der of four-year-old Barbara Jean Horn, Walter Ogrod (pic­tured, sec­ond from right, with mem­bers of his defense team) has been exon­er­at­ed from Pennsylvania​’s…

The North Carolina Supreme Court has struck down the state legislature’s attempt­ed retroac­tive repeal of the state’s Racial Justice Act (RJA), restor­ing the rights of approx­i­mate­ly 140 death-row pris­on­ers to seek redress of death sen­tences that they had claimed were substantially affected…

In three decades of pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion and analy­sis on the death penal­ty, DPIC has cov­ered thou­sands of cas­es, stud­ies, and schol­ar­ly arti­cles on the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty in the United States. We know that racial injus­tice has been a core prob­lem in the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty and that it per­sists to the present day. The his­to­ry of the death penal­ty is inter­twined with that of vig­i­lante and law enforce­ment vio­lence against African…

NEWS (6/​5/​20) — North Carolina: The North Carolina Supreme Court has struck down the state leg­is­la­ture’s attempt­ed retroac­tive repeal of the state’s Racial Justice Act, restor­ing the rights of approx­i­mate­ly 130 death-row pris­on­ers to seek redress of death sen­tences that they had claimed were sub­stan­tial­ly affect­ed by racial…

NEWS (6/​5/​20) — Ohio: Governor Mike DeWine (pic­tured) issued reprieves to the last three Ohio death-row pris­on­ers fac­ing exe­cu­tions dates in 2020, ensur­ing that the state will not car­ry out any exe­cu­tions this year. A news release announc­ing the action said the reprieves were grant­ed​“due to ongo­ing prob­lems involv­ing the will­ing­ness of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sup­pli­ers to pro­vide drugs to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC), pursuant…