Publications & Testimony

At least five peo­ple were exon­er­at­ed in 2018 after hav­ing been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed in cas­es that involved the mis­use or threat­ened use of the death penal­ty, a DPIC analy­sis of data accom­pa­ny­ing a new report by the National Registry of Exonerations has shown. The National Registry’s annu­al report on wrong­ful con­vic­tions, Exonerations in 2018, record­ed a record 151 new exon­er­a­tions across the United States in 2018, includ­ing 68 exon­er­a­tions result­ing from wrong­ful homicide…

The Fresno County District Attorney’s office has announced that it is drop­ping the death penal­ty against Douglas Stankewitz (pic­tured), California’s longest-serv­ing death-row pris­on­er. After review­ing exten­sive mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence that Stankewitz’s tri­al coun­sel had failed to inves­ti­gate, Fresno pros­e­cu­tors announced on April 19, 2019 that a sen­tence of life with­out parole would be ​“fair and just” in Stankewitz’s case and that they will not…

Three south­ern states have tak­en action to lim­it the public’s access to infor­ma­tion relat­ing to exe­cu­tions by increas­ing secre­cy sur­round­ing lethal-injec­tion drug sup­pli­ers. On April 12, 2019, the Texas Supreme Court reversed an ear­li­er deci­sion that would have dis­closed the source of lethal-injec­tion drugs used to car­ry out exe­cu­tions in Texas in 2014, assert­ing that dis­clo­sure ​“would cre­ate a sub­stan­tial threat of phys­i­cal harm to the source’s employ­ees and oth­ers.” On…

A sec­ond Muslim death-row pris­on­er has filed a fed­er­al civ­il rights law­suit chal­leng­ing Alabama​’s pol­i­cy of allow­ing only a Protestant Christian chap­lain in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber. Charles Burton, Jr. (pic­tured), con­vert­ed to Islam 47 years ago. In a com­plaint filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, Burton, who was sen­tenced to death in 1992, argues that Alabama’s pol­i­cy vio­lates the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses…

A civil­ian fed­er­al appeals court has dealt anoth­er blow to the Guantánamo mil­i­tary com­mis­sion death-penal­ty pro­ceed­ings, strik­ing more than two years of deci­sions in the USS Cole bomb­ing pros­e­cu­tion of Abd Al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed Al-Nashiri because of a mil­i­tary judge’s undis­closed con­flict of inter­est. Al-Nashiri faces cap­i­tal charges for his alleged role in the sui­cide bomb­ing attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000 in which 17 U.S. Navy sailors were killed and…

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the case of a South Dakota death-row pris­on­er whose jurors made anti-gay state­ments and relied on homo­pho­bic beliefs in decid­ing to sen­tence him to death. On April 15, 2019, the Court with­out com­ment denied a peti­tion filed by Charles Rhines (pic­tured) ask­ing the Court to declare that the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to an impar­tial jury applies equal­ly to bias against a defendant’s sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. In…

In a con­tentious rul­ing issued in the ear­ly morn­ing hours of April 12, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court vacat­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion issued by low­er fed­er­al courts and cleared the way for Alabama to exe­cute Christopher Price (pic­tured). The Court’s 5 – 4 deci­sion, issued after 2:00 a.m. Eastern time, came after Alabama had post­poned Price’s exe­cu­tion min­utes before the mid­night Central time expi­ra­tion of his death war­rant, with the low­er court stay…

In a vote death-penal­ty oppo­nents praised as ​“his­toric,” a veto-proof super­ma­jor­i­ty of the New Hampshire leg­is­la­ture gave final approval to a bill that would repeal the state’s death penal­ty statute. By a vote of 17 – 6, the sen­a­tors vot­ed on April 11, 2019 to end cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions in the Granite State, exceed­ing the two-thirds major­i­ty nec­es­sary to over­ride an antic­i­pat­ed veto by Governor Chris Sununu. In March, the state House of Representatives passed the same abolition…

The Missouri Supreme Court has ordered a new sen­tenc­ing tri­al for Marvin D. Rice (pic­tured), a for­mer sheriff’s deputy whose tri­al judge sen­tenced him to death despite the votes of 11 of his 12 jurors to sen­tence him to life. On April 2, 2019, the court vacat­ed the death sen­tence imposed by St. Charles County Judge Kelly Wayne Parker in 2017 under the state’s con­tro­ver­sial ​“hung jury” sen­tenc­ing pro­vi­sion. Under that law, the tri­al judge has…