Publications & Testimony

In 1993, James Erin McKinney was con­vict­ed of two mur­ders com­mit­ted dur­ing the course of sep­a­rate bur­glar­ies. Sentenced under judge-only penal­ty pro­ce­dures that were lat­er declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, McKinney’s case for life includ­ed the pre­sen­ta­tion of mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence of chron­ic, severe child­hood abuse and neglect that left McKinney suf­fer­ing from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder…

DPIC Analysis: With the U.S. Supreme Court’s February 6 rul­ing deny­ing the Department of Justice’s appli­ca­tion to vacate the fed­er­al-exe­cu­­tion injunc­tions, more death war­rants will have been blocked by stays of exe­cu­tion or judi­cial injunc­tions in 2019 than will have been car­ried out. As of December 8, DPIC was aware of 65 death war­rants issued by 11 states and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment that sched­uled exe­cu­tion dates for…

In a depar­ture from its pri­or edi­to­r­i­al stand, the Orlando Sentinel pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al on November 22, 2019 call­ing for Florida to abol­ish the death penal­ty. Describing the state’s cap­i­­tal-pun­ish­­ment sys­tem as a​“hope­less quag­mire of inequities,” the Sentinel said “[t]oo many ques­tions can­not be ade­quate­ly answered for us to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing the death penal­ty, and for Florida to continue administering…

Popular cul­ture has the poten­tial to change social atti­tudes, and actors in two eager­ly antic­i­pat­ed movies focus­ing on the death penal­ty are hop­ing that their films will do just that. In recent inter­views about their roles in the dra­mas Just Mercy and Clemency, actors Jamie Foxx, Alfre Woodard, and Aldis Hodge dis­cuss how those films inspired them to open up about their past and…

For the first time since Gallup began ask­ing the ques­tion in 1985, a major­i­ty of Americans now say life impris­on­ment is a bet­ter approach for pun­ish­ing mur­der than is the death penal­ty. According to the 2019 Gallup death-penal­­ty poll (click here to enlarge graph­ic), 60% per­cent of Americans asked to choose whether the death penal­ty or life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole​“is the bet­ter penal­ty for mur­der” chose the life-sen­­tenc­ing option. 36% favored…

NEWS — November 29: The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has affirmed a fed­er­al dis­trict court rul­ing grant­i­ng Arizona death-row pris­on­er Barry Lee Jones a new tri­al based on his tri­al lawyer’s fail­ure to inves­ti­gate and present evi­dence that he is inno­cent. Jones had been con­vict­ed of sex­u­al assault, three counts ofchild abuse, and felony mur­der in con­nec­tion with the death of a four-year-old girl, Rachel Gold. The court found that,…

The num­ber of peo­ple on death row or fac­ing cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing in the United States is at a 27-year low, accord­ing to a DPIC analy­sis of data from a new death-row cen­sus by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). The Summer 2019 edi­tion of Death Row USA, released ear­li­er this month, reports that 2,656 peo­ple were on death row as of July 1, 2019. That last time DRUSA report­ed a death-row pop­u­la­tion that small was in the Fall of 1992,…

A fed­er­al judge in Washington has issued a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion bar­ring the United States gov­ern­ment from car­ry­ing out four exe­cu­tions sched­uled for December 2019 and January 2020. The opin­ion, issued November 20, 2019, tem­porar­i­ly halts the fed­er­al exe­cu­tions pend­ing com­ple­tion of court chal­lenges to the government’s exe­cu­tion process and is a major blow to the Trump administration’s plan to resume car­ry­ing out the fed­er­al death penal­ty after a sixteen-year…

Pennsylvania has agreed to end its pol­i­cy of manda­to­ry incar­cer­a­tion of death-row pris­on­ers in per­ma­nent soli­tary con­fine­ment. The pol­i­cy change was part of a pro­posed set­tle­ment agree­ment of a fed­er­al class action law­suit brought by a coali­tion of pris­on­ers’ rights orga­ni­za­tions on behalf of the Commonwealth’s 136 death-row pris­on­ers, most of whom are housed in the State Correctional Institution-Greene (pic­tured from…

Two civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions have filed a class action law­suit against Mississippi pros­e­cu­tor Doug Evans (pic­tured) seek­ing an end to what they describe as a​“pol­i­cy, cus­tom, and usage of racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry jury selec­tion.” The law­suit, filed by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the MacArthur Justice Center on November 18, 2019 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi on behalf of black prospective…