Publications & Testimony

Overturning the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for the sec­ond time, the United States Supreme Court ruled on February 19, 2019, that Texas death-row pris­on­er Bobby James Moore is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and may not be exe­cut­ed. In an unsigned opin­ion, the Supreme Court reversed the lat­est Texas appeals court deci­sion that would have allowed Moore’s exe­cu­tion, say­ing the state court had relied on many of the…

Bills to repeal and replace the death penal­ty with non-cap­i­­tal pun­ish­ments have gained new trac­tion across the United States in 2019 as a result of oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty among ide­o­log­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors. That move­ment – buoyed by fis­cal and pro-life con­ser­v­a­tives, con­ser­v­a­tive law-reform advo­cates, and the deep­en­ing involve­ment of the Catholic Church in death-penal­­ty abo­li­tion – has led to unprece­dent­ed suc­cess­es in numerous…

Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety, New Hampshire House of Representatives: Testimony on HB 455 – Changing the penal­ty for cap­i­tal mur­der to life impris­on­ment with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty for parole by Robert Brett Dunham, Executive Director, Death Penalty Information Center (Concord, February 19, 2019). Exhibits to Mr. Dunham’s tes­ti­mo­ny can be accessed…

A February 4, 2019 arti­cle in the crim­i­nal jus­tice newslet­ter, The Appeal, fea­tures the case of Demetrius Howard, a California pris­on­er sen­tenced to death for a crime in which he didn’t kill any­one. Howard was sen­tenced to death in 1995 for his par­tic­i­pa­tion in a rob­bery in which anoth­er man, Mitchell Funches, shot and killed Sherry Collins. Howard was nev­er accused of fir­ing a shot and he has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained that he…

As exe­cu­tion drugs have become more dif­fi­cult for states to law­ful­ly obtain and prob­lem­at­ic exe­cu­tions have become more fre­quent, states have expand­ed their efforts to shield their exe­cu­­tion-relat­ed activ­i­ties from pub­lic scruti­ny. In the lat­est episode of Discussions with DPIC, Robin Konrad, for­mer DPIC Director of Research and Special Projects, joins Executive Director Robert Dunham and cur­rent Director of Research and Special Projects Ngozi Ndulue to…

The U.S. Supreme Court has found itself in the cross­fire of harsh crit­i­cism from across the polit­i­cal spec­trum after its inter­ven­tion in a death penal­ty case allowed Alabama to exe­cute a Muslim pris­on­er with­out pro­vid­ing him access to a religious…

Colorado Governor Jared Polis (pic­tured) has said he will​“strong­ly con­sid­er” com­mut­ing the death sen­tences of the three men on the state’s death row if the state abol­ish­es the death penal­ty. In a February 7, 2019 inter­view on Colorado Public Radio, Polis told Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner,​“if the leg­is­la­ture sends us a bill to elim­i­nate the death penal­ty in Colorado, I would sign that bill … [and] I would certainly take…

Georgia death-row pris­on­er Keith Tharpe (pic­tured, left) and Oklahoma death-row pris­on­er Julius Jones (pic­tured, right) are ask­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to grant them new tri­als after evi­dence showed that white jurors who described the defen­dants with racist slurs par­tic­i­pat­ed in decid­ing their cas­es. The involve­ment of the racist jurors, the pris­on­ers say, vio­lat­ed their Sixth Amendment rights to…

In a 5 – 4 deci­sion that Justice Elena Kagan char­ac­ter­ized as​“pro­found­ly wrong,” the U.S. Supreme Court on February 7, 2019 per­mit­ted Alabama to exe­cute a Muslim death-row pris­on­er, Domineque Ray (pic­tured), who had claimed that the state’s exe­cu­tion process dis­crim­i­nat­ed against him because of his reli­gion. Without expla­na­tion, the Court assert­ed that Ray had wait­ed too long to chal­lenge a pro­vi­sion in Alabama’s…

Clemency, a film explor­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal toll of the death penal­ty, has been award­ed the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for Drama at the pres­ti­gious Sundance Film Festival on February 2, 2019. The movie, writ­ten and direct­ed by Nigerian-American film­mak­er Chinonye Chukwu, tells the sto­ry of prison war­den Bernadine Williams (por­trayed by Alfre Woodard) as she pre­pares to over­see her 12^th exe­cu­tion in the aftermath of…