Publications & Testimony

The retire­ment of Justice Anthony Kennedy from the U.S. Supreme Court after the 2017 – 2018 court term and his replace­ment with Justice Brett Kavanaugh marked a poten­tial­ly piv­otal change in the con­sti­tu­tion of the Court with respect to death-penalty…

2018 was a record-low year for death-penal­ty usage in the United States, as eigh­teen death-penal­ty states set or matched records for the fewest new death sen­tences imposed in the mod­ern his­to­ry of U.S. cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. (Click here to enlarge map.) Thirty-five U.S. states — includ­ing six­teen that autho­rized cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 2018 — did not impose any death sen­tences in 2018, while California and Pennsylvania, which col­lec­tive­ly account for…

The R Street Institute, a Washington-based pol­i­cy think tank, has joined the grow­ing num­ber of con­ser­v­a­tive voic­es advo­cat­ing for death-penal­ty abo­li­tion. In a com­men­tary in the November/​December 2018 issue of The American Conservative, the institute’s crim­i­nal jus­tice and civ­il lib­er­ties pol­i­cy direc­tor Arthur Rizer (pic­tured, left) and its Southeast region direc­tor Marc Hyden (pic­tured, right) argue that ​“the…

Empowered by the results of the November 2018 mid-term elec­tions, leg­is­la­tures in at least four states are poised to renew efforts to repeal their states’ death-penal­ty statutes or dras­ti­cal­ly reduce the cir­cum­stances in which cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is avail­able. State leg­isla­tive and guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tions in Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Oregon…

Death-row exoneree Ron Keine (pic­tured) reflects on spend­ing the hol­i­days on death…

In the lat­est pod­cast episode of Discussions with DPIC, mem­bers of the DPIC staff dis­cuss key themes from the 2018 Year End Report. Robert Dunham, Ngozi Ndulue, and Anne Holsinger delve into the major death-penal­ty trends and news items of the year, includ­ing the ​“extend­ed trend” of gen­er­a­tional lows in death sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tions, elec­tion results that indi­cate the decline will like­ly con­tin­ue, and the pos­si­ble impact of Pope Francis’s change to Catholic…

Florida courts have refused death-row pris­on­ers access to DNA test­ing sev­en­ty times, deny­ing 19 men – eight of whom have been exe­cut­ed – any test­ing at all and pre­vent­ing nine oth­ers from obtain­ing test­ing of addi­tion­al evi­dence or more advanced DNA test­ing after ini­tial tests were incon­clu­sive. For a six-part inves­tiga­tive series, Blood and truth: The lin­ger­ing case of Tommy Zeigler and how Florida fights DNA test­ing, Tampa Bay Times Pulitzer-prize winning…

In March 2018, Alabama enact­ed a new law autho­riz­ing the use of nitro­gen gas as an alter­na­tive method of exe­cu­tion. Although lethal injec­tion remained the pri­ma­ry method of exe­cu­tion, the law pro­vid­ed con­demned pris­on­ers a lim­it­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty to des­ig­nate nitro­gen asphyx­i­a­tion (hypox­ia) as the means of their death. The avail­abil­i­ty of exe­cu­tion by nitro­gen gas led to a July 2018 set­tle­ment of a fed­er­al law­suit Alabama’s death-row pris­on­ers had filed that had…