Publications & Testimony

In a May 7, 2024 edi­to­r­i­al, the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board cites the deeply engrained racial dis­par­i­ties in the California death penal­ty sys­tem and how those facts led them to con­clude that ​“even if the state could per­form pain­less and anx­i­ety-free exe­cu­tions and racial bias­es were elim­i­nat­ed, the death penal­ty would still be wrong.” ​“Black defen­dants were 4.6 to 8.7 times more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death than oth­er defen­dants fac­ing sim­i­lar charges” the Board notes, and ​“Latinos…

A new arti­cle, ​“Gender Matters: Women on Death Row in the United States,” explores the cas­es of 48 women who were sen­tenced to death in the United States between 1990 and 2023. ​“We believe that women’s cap­i­tal sen­tences are best explained by exam­in­ing the events of their lives with­in a larg­er social con­text, and by ana­lyz­ing how those expe­ri­ences — and the women them­selves — were treat­ed with­in the legal sys­tem,” said the authors, who include Sandra Babcock (pic­tured left), a Clinical Professor…

On April 30, 2024, a week after the par­ties in Glossip v. Oklahoma filed mer­its briefs at the United States Supreme Court, sev­er­al ami­ci filed briefs in sup­port of the par­ties’ joint posi­tion, ask­ing the Court to grant Richard Glossip (pic­tured) a new tri­al. Ken Cuccinelli, the for­mer Virginia Attorney General and Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security under President Donald Trump, said in his brief that the con­se­quences of fail­ing to over­turn Mr. Glossip’s con­vic­tion are ​“most dire.”…

Recent report­ing by The Intercept con­firms a sto­ry aired in April 2024 on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver iden­ti­fy­ing Connecticut-based Absolute Standards as the source of the exe­cu­tion drugs used in 13 fed­er­al exe­cu­tions in 2020 and 2021. Absolute Standards pro­duces mate­ri­als for cal­i­brat­ing research equip­ment, but in 2018, it applied to the Drug Enforcement Administration to be reg­is­tered as a bulk pro­duc­er of pen­to­bar­bi­tal, the anes­thet­ic used in fed­er­al exe­cu­tions and in many…

On April 25, 2024, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania jury award­ed $16 mil­lion to for­mer death row pris­on­er Jimmy Dennis (pic­tured), who was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and spent 25 years in prison. Following nine days of tri­al, jurors deter­mined that the city of Philadelphia owes Mr. Dennis $10 mil­lion, and the two detec­tives who ​“engaged in mali­cious or wan­ton mis­con­duct” owe him an addi­tion­al $3 mil­lion each. Mr. Dennis was sen­tenced to death in 1991 for a mur­der he main­tained he could not have…

An April 28, 2024 report by Ed Pilkington in The Guardian chron­i­cles the trau­ma expe­ri­ences by prison offi­cials assigned to car­ry out exe­cu­tions. Oklahoma cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers asked Attorney General Gentner Drummond to slow the pace of exe­cu­tions, cit­ing ​“last­ing trau­ma,” Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and alco­hol abuse among staff due to fre­quent exe­cu­tions in the state. Former cor­rec­tions direc­tor Justin Jones told Mr. Pilkington, ​“It affects your men­tal state when it becomes so routine,”…

Missouri’s April 9^th exe­cu­tion of Brian Dorsey, despite wide­spread sup­port for his clemen­cy, once again gar­nered con­dem­na­tion from the European Union, which described it as a ​“inhu­man and degrad­ing prac­tice.” The EU’s state­ment high­light­ed the lack of the death penal­ty as a deter­rent and the irre­versibil­i­ty of the pun­ish­ment, not­ing that 197 death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers have been exon­er­at­ed. ​“The EU con­tin­ues to call for the uni­ver­sal abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty and for States, that maintain…

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Elisabeth Semel, Clinical Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley (pic­tured). Professor Semel joined Berkeley Law in 2001 as the first direc­tor of the school’s death penal­ty clin­ic and remains the clinic’s co-direc­tor, where stu­dents have rep­re­sent­ed indi­vid­u­als fac­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and writ­ten ami­cus briefs in death penal­ty cas­es before the United States Supreme…

On April 18, 2024, the Arkansas Supreme Court decid­ed 4 – 3 to reverse a 2022 low­er court deci­sion and allow genet­ic test­ing of crime scene evi­dence from the 1993 killing of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis. The three men con­vict­ed in 1994 for the killings were released in 2011 after tak­ing an Alford plea, in which they main­tained their inno­cence but plead guilty to the crime, in exchange for 18 years’ time served and 10 years of a suspended…

On April 22, 2024, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price announced that her office was ordered by a fed­er­al judge to review 35 death penal­ty con­vic­tions after the dis­clo­sure of evi­dence that sev­er­al pros­e­cu­tors inten­tion­al­ly exclud­ed Black and Jewish peo­ple from serv­ing on a cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al in 1995. In a press con­fer­ence, DA Price indi­cat­ed that her office dis­cov­ered the hand­writ­ten notes of for­mer pros­e­cu­tors that include dis­crim­i­na­to­ry jury selec­tion tac­tics, suggesting…