Publications & Testimony

NEWS — January 3: In Florida, a tri­al judge in Fort Myers accept­ed the jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion and sen­tenced Mark Sievers to death for the mur­der of his wife. In Oklahoma, the court for­mal­ly sen­tenced Byron Shepard to death for the mur­der of a Pottawatomie County police offi­cer. They were the first death sen­tences of the new decade.

At least 99 men and one woman are on death row in eight U.S. states, con­demned to death by judges with­out the pri­or autho­riza­tion of a jury, accord­ing to a 2019 study by researchers Michael Radelet and Ben Cohen (pic­tured) pub­lished in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science. Another 18 pris­on­ers sen­tenced to death since the resump­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S. in the 1970s, the study shows, have been exe­cut­ed after judges disregarded or…

In the December 2019 edi­tion of the Discussions with DPIC pod­cast, Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham and Managing Director Anne Holsinger dis­cuss DPIC’s 2019 Year End Report. The pod­cast explores the major themes pre­sent­ed in the year’s death-penal­ty news and devel­op­ments, includ­ing inno­cence, declin­ing use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, and sys­temic prob­lems revealed by the new death sen­tences and executions in…

Billy Joe Wardlow (pic­tured) was 18 years old, when he killed 82-year-old Carl Cole dur­ing a botched attempt to steal Cole’s car so that Wardlow and his girl­friend could pur­sue their fan­ta­sy of run­ning away from their abu­sive homes in Carson, Texas to start a new life in Montana. Wardlow, who had no pri­or his­to­ry of vio­lence, has regret­ted his action ever since. In the cov­er sto­ry for the Winter 2020 issue of the mag­a­zine The American Scholar,…

The use of the death penal­ty as a polit­i­cal weapon was on dis­play in late December 2019 in an extra­or­di­nary series of four unre­lat­ed cas­es in Pakistan and the Middle…

In a year of declin­ing death-penal­ty usage across the United States, nowhere was the ero­sion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as sus­tained and pro­nounced in 2019 as it was in the west­ern United States. Continuing a wave of momen­tum from Washington​’s judi­cial abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in October 2018, one state halt­ed exe­cu­tions and dis­man­tled its death cham­ber, anoth­er cleared its death row, two cut back on the cir­cum­stances in which the death penal­ty could be sought and imposed,…

Alabama sen­tenced Toforest Johnson to death, his lawyers and nation­al experts say, because of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, false eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, and inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion. In an ami­cus brief filed in a Birmingham tri­al court on December 12, 2019, the Innocence Project says, ​“If ever a case bore the hall­marks of a wrong­ful con­vic­tion, Toforest Johnson’s is…

As the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment tri­al of accused Parkland, Florida school shoot­er Nikolas Cruz was post­poned until at least the sum­mer of 2020, the father of one of the vic­tims of the attack has urged the pros­e­cu­tion to end the case now by drop­ping the death…

Paul Skalnik is a sex offend­er and con man whose jail­house ​“snitch” tes­ti­mo­ny was used by Florida and Texas pros­e­cu­tors to con­vict more than 37 defen­dants, includ­ing four who were sen­tenced to death. His tes­ti­mo­ny that James Dailey (pic­tured) alleged­ly con­fessed to the bru­tal 1985 stab­bing and drown­ing death of 14-year-old Shelley Boggio con­tributed to Dailey’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence, despite the prosecution’s admis­sion that no ​“phys­i­cal evi­dence,” ​“no…

The death penal­ty has now dis­ap­peared from whole regions of the coun­try and con­tin­ues to erode in oth­ers, accord­ing to the Death Penalty Information Center’s 2019 Year End Report. With New Hampshire’s repeal of its cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute in May, 21 states have now abol­ished the death penal­ty, with nine hav­ing done so since 2004. In March, California Governor Gavin Newsom imposed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions on the nation’s largest death row, join­ing gov­er­nors in Oregon, Colorado, and…