Publications & Testimony

Citing ​“egre­gious” mis­con­duct by state prison offi­cials in try­ing to evade a court order to pro­duce pub­lic records con­cern­ing its efforts to obtain lethal-injec­tion drugs, an Indiana judge has direct­ed the state’s Department of Correction to pay more than a half mil­lion dol­lars in plain­tiffs’ attor­ney fees. On June 12, 2019, Marion County Circuit Judge Sheryl Lynch (pic­tured) award­ed $538,000 in attor­ney fees to plain­tiffs who were seeking…

NEWS (6/​20): Georgia’s exe­cu­tion of Marion Wilson was the 1,500^th exe­cu­tion in the United States and the 74^th in Georgia since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of new death-penal­ty laws in 1976. It was the 10^th exe­cu­tion in the U.S. in 2019 and the sec­ond in Georgia. 82% of all exe­cu­tions in the United States since the 1970s — and every exe­cu­tion so far in 2019 — have been in the South. See…

The Death Penalty Information Center has mod­ern­ized and expand­ed its award-win­ning web­site. On June 14, 2019, DPIC launched its redesigned web­site, cul­mi­nat­ing a two-year project that involved the trans­fer and reor­ga­ni­za­tion of infor­ma­tion on the Center’s more than 7,000 web­pages. Among the most notable addi­tions of the new web­site are 20 inter­ac­tive Tableau graph­ics, includ­ing States With and Without the Death Penalty, Prisoners on Death Row, and a number…

A North Carolina death-row pris­on­er is seek­ing a new tri­al based on alle­ga­tions that pros­e­cu­tors in his case used a train­ing doc­u­ment steeped in racist stereo­types to man­u­fac­ture pre­tex­tu­al rea­sons to exclude African Americans from serv­ing on his jury. In a June 4, 2019 court fil­ing in the appeal of Russell William Tucker (pic­tured), two nation­al experts say that the Forsyth County pros­e­cu­tors uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly exer­cised their dis­cre­tionary juror chal­lenges on the basis of race to strike all…

The Ohio House of Representatives has over­whelm­ing­ly approved a bill that would ban the death penal­ty for offend­ers who were seri­ous­ly men­tal­ly ill at the time of the offense. House Bill 136, spon­sored by Rep. Brett Hillyer (R – Uhrichsville, pic­tured), passed the House by a vote of 76 – 18 on June 5, 2019 with bipar­ti­san sup­port and was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 11. Hillyer’s bill would remove the death penal­ty as a sen­tenc­ing option for defen­dants who can show they…

The U.S. Supreme Court has grant­ed review of an Arizona death-penal­ty case in which the state courts first refused to con­sid­er a defendant’s mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence and then denied his request for a jury sen­tenc­ing hear­ing after his death sen­tence was over­turned. The Court on June 10, 2019 grant­ed the peti­tion for writ of cer­tio­rari filed by Arizona death-row pris­on­er James Erin McKinney (pic­tured) 26 years after he was first sentenced to…

A spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor in Harris County, Texas, has filed a com­plaint with the Texas State Bar Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel against for­mer Assistant District Attorney Daniel Rizzo, alleg­ing that Rizzo inten­tion­al­ly con­cealed excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence cru­cial to the exon­er­a­tion of for­mer death-row pris­on­er Alfred Dewayne Brown (pic­tured). Brown was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 2005 for a rob­bery mur­der in which a store clerk…

NEWS (6/​16): On this date 75 years ago, South Carolina exe­cut­ed George Stinney, an inno­cent 14-year-old black boy framed for the mur­ders of two young white girls. The Stinney fam­i­ly was forced to flee their home in Alcolu because of the threat of vio­lence. Stinney was tried before an all-white jury in a tri­al that took less than half a day. He was the only black per­son in the cour­t­house. The jury took just ten min­utes to con­vict him and…

A study of tax rates and crime rates in Texas coun­ties has found that death-penal­ty tri­als con­tribute to high­er prop­er­ty tax rates and increased rates of prop­er­ty crime. Alex Lundberg (pic­tured), an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of Economics at West Virginia University, ana­lyzed bud­getary and crime rate data from Texas coun­ties and found that coun­ties respond­ed to the high cost bur­den of cap­i­tal tri­als by rais­ing prop­er­ty tax­es and reducing public…

One year after a state task force issued a report call­ing Pennsylvania’s death penal­ty seri­ous­ly flawed and in need of major reform, bipar­ti­san oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is sur­fac­ing in the Commonwealth’s leg­is­la­ture. A group of leg­is­la­tors, led by Lebanon County Republican State Rep. Frank Ryan (pic­tured, left) and Philadelphia Democrat Chris Rabb (pic­tured, right), have pre­pared leg­is­la­tion to repeal Pennsylvania’s death penal­ty and are cir­cu­lat­ing the proposal for…