Publications & Testimony

In a vic­to­ry for the media and advo­cates of open gov­ern­ment, a unan­i­mous three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled on March 18, 2019 that Alabama must dis­close key por­tions of its high­ly secre­tive lethal-injec­­tion exe­cu­tion pro­to­col to the pub­lic. The Associated Press, the Montgomery Advertiser, and Alabama Media Group had sued for access to the pro­to­col, which came under intense scruti­ny in the wake of Alabama’s failed…

For the sec­ond time in just over one month, the United States Supreme Court has cleared the way for the exe­cu­tion of an African-American pris­on­er in the face of strong evi­dence of racial or reli­gious bias. On March 18, 2019, the Court unan­i­mous­ly declined to hear an appeal from Georgia death-row pris­on­er Keith Tharpe (pic­tured), who argued his death sen­tence was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly taint­ed by the par­tic­i­pa­tion of racist…

Beth Kissileff (pic­tured), a writer and the wife of a rab­bi who sur­vived the shoot­ing ram­page that killed eleven wor­ship­pers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life syn­a­gogue, has asked the U.S. Department of Justice not to seek the death penal­ty against the man charged with com­mit­ting those mur­ders. In an opin­ion arti­cle for the Religion News Service, Kissileff wrote that she and her hus­band, Rabbi Jonathan Perlman of Pittsburgh’s New Light Congregation, engaged federal prosecutors…

This list tracks known Florida death-sen­­tenced pris­on­ers eli­gi­ble for relief under Hurst v. Florida (2016) because 1) their jury rec­om­men­da­tions for death were not unan­i­mous, and 2) their con­vic­tions became final after Ring v. Arizona (2002), which estab­lished that juries must find each aggra­vat­ing fac­tor nec­es­sary to impose death. The ini­tial list was gen­er­at­ed by Michael Radelet, Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and reported the…

Two pros­e­cu­tors with dif­fer­ent philo­soph­i­cal per­spec­tives on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have called on their respec­tive states to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Boulder County, Colorado, District Attorney Michael Dougherty (pic­tured, left), who oppos­es cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in prin­ci­ple, and for­mer Washoe County, Nevada, homi­cide pros­e­cu­tor Thomas E. Viloria (pic­tured, right), who has suc­cess­ful­ly obtained four death ver­dicts, have…

This is an archival page. To see updat­ed news, please view the lethal injec­tion news and developments feed…

On June 21, 2019, the United States Supreme Court vacat­ed Curtis Flowers’ con­vic­tion in a 7 – 2 deci­sion. For more infor­ma­tion about the opin­ion, read DPIC’s sum­ma­ry here. See also Supreme Court Vacates Conviction in Mississippi Death Penalty Case Finding Race Discrimination in…

In October 2018, the Washington Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly struck down the state’s death penal­ty, find­ing that it had been​“imposed in an arbi­trary and racial­ly biased man­ner.” In reach­ing its deci­sion in State v. Gregory, the court relied upon a study of twen­­ty-five years of Washington State cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions that demon­strat­ed that Washington juries were 4.5 times more like­ly to impose a death…

California Governor Gavin Newsom on March 13, 2019 declared a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the state with the nation’s largest death row. Newsom imple­ment­ed the mora­to­ri­um through an exec­u­tive order grant­i­ng reprieves to the 737 pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly on California’s death row. He also announced that he was with­draw­ing the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col — the admin­is­tra­tive plan by which exe­cu­tions are car­ried out — and was clos­ing down the state’s execution chamber.

In the past few years, the gov­er­nors of California, Pennsylvania, Washington, Colorado, and Oregon have put a halt to exe­cu­tions in their states because of prob­lems in the death penal­ty sys­tem. Below are some of the rea­sons they gave for for…