Publications & Testimony

On November 2, 2023, Demetrius Minor, the National Manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty and Davis Turner, a retired attor­ney whose broth­er was mur­dered in Nashville in 2009 and a board mem­ber of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, co-authored an op-ed in The Tennessean dis­cussing a recent report by the Death Penalty Information Center. ​“Doomed to Repeat: The Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty” details the his­to­ry of racial vio­lence and use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Tennessee. Mr. Minor and Mr. Turner note that…

On October 26, 2023, Judge Coral Sanchez of Utah’s Third Circuit Court heard argu­ments in a law­suit filed by five death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers against the State in April. Ralph Menzies, Troy Kell, Michael Archuleta, Douglas Carter, and Taberon Honie seek an order vacat­ing Utah’s cur­rent exe­cu­tion pro­to­col and enjoin­ing its use. The law­suit argues that the State’s two-pronged pro­to­col, with lethal injec­tion as the default method of exe­cu­tion and fir­ing squad as a back­up, con­sti­tutes cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment in both meth­ods and is there­fore uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under the Eighth Amendment. At…

A bill to repeal the death penal­ty in Pennsylvania has passed a com­mit­tee in the commonwealth’s House of Representatives. The Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee vot­ed 15 – 10 in favor of HB 999 on October 31, 2023. That vote is the first step toward abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty in Pennsylvania, which has had a for­mal mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions since 2015 and has not exe­cut­ed any­one since 1999.

The Gallup Crime Survey has asked about the fair­ness of death penal­ty appli­ca­tion in the United States since 2000. For the first time, the October 2023 sur­vey reports that more Americans believe the death penal­ty is applied unfair­ly (50%) than fair­ly (47%). Between 2000 and 2015, 51%-61% of Americans said they thought cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was applied fair­ly in the U.S., but this num­ber has been drop­ping since 2016. This year’s num­ber of 47% rep­re­sents a his­toric low in the his­to­ry of Gallup’s polling.

In this month’s Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Margot Ravenscroft (pic­tured), Director of AMICUS UK, a British char­i­ty whose vol­un­teers sup­port the cap­i­tal defense effort in the United States. Ms. Ravenscroft describes how AMICUS was found­ed by a British woman who became a pen friend to a Louisiana death row pris­on­er Andrew Lee Jones. Jane Officer, a retired school­teacher, spent many years exchang­ing let­ters with Mr. Jones and returned to the UK after his exe­cu­tion deter­mined to help those still on death row. Ms. Ravenscroft explains…

Though the Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution for­bids the death penal­ty for a per­son who is ​“insane” at the time of exe­cu­tion, it has nev­er held that the exe­cu­tion of peo­ple with seri­ous men­tal ill­ness is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Experts have found that two in five peo­ple exe­cut­ed between 2000 and 2015 had a men­tal ill­ness diag­no­sis such as bipo­lar dis­or­der, schiz­o­phre­nia, or PTSD. Since 2017, at least eleven states have attempt­ed to strength­en pro­tec­tions for vul­ner­a­ble pris­on­ers by intro­duc­ing bills bar­ring the exe­cu­tion of those with seri­ous men­tal illness…

On October 23, 2023, 38 indi­vid­u­als were sen­tenced to death for the mob killing of Jamal Ben Ismail, who had been mis­tak­en­ly iden­ti­fied as the arson­ist respon­si­ble for the August 2021 fires that killed 90 peo­ple in the north­west region. Despite the death sen­tences, all pris­on­ers will be resen­tenced to life impris­on­ment due to the nation­wide mora­to­ri­um in place since 1993 when the last exe­cu­tions occurred. 

On October 30, 2023, the United States Supreme Court denied Texas death-sen­tenced pris­on­er Brent Brewer’s (pic­tured) peti­tion for cer­tio­rari, clear­ing the way for his sched­uled exe­cu­tion on November 9^th. Mr. Brewer’s attor­neys argue that unre­li­able ​“future dan­ger­ous­ness” junk sci­ence tes­ti­mo­ny from a psy­chi­a­trist who nev­er even met Mr. Brewer result­ed in his death sen­tence. Following the Supreme Court’s deci­sion, attor­neys for Mr. Brewer sub­mit­ted a clemen­cy appli­ca­tion, detail­ing the fact that one of his jurors did not want to sen­tence him to death. The appli­ca­tion also details Mr. Brewer’s good…

On October 26, 2023, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion for William Speer, who was set to be exe­cut­ed the same evening for the killing of anoth­er pris­on­er 26 years ago. Mr. Speer has been sched­uled to die by lethal injec­tion, but his attor­neys asked the TCCA to pause his exe­cu­tion over alle­ga­tions that pros­e­cu­tors failed to dis­close evi­dence at tri­al, know­ing­ly pre­sent­ed false tes­ti­mo­ny, and that his tri­al lawyers pro­vid­ed inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion by fail­ing to present mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence of severe child­hood trau­ma and…