Publications & Testimony

Nations that abol­ish the death penal­ty then tend to see their mur­der rates decline, accord­ing to a December 2018 report by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, a Washington, DC-based orga­ni­za­tion that pro­motes human rights and democ­ra­cy in Iran. The report exam­ined mur­der rates in 11 coun­tries that have abol­ished cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, find­ing that ten of those coun­tries expe­ri­enced a decline in mur­der rates in the decade fol­low­ing abo­li­tion. Countries were includ­ed if they met the following…

The Florida Supreme Court issued rul­ings in thir­teen death penal­ty cas­es in the last two weeks of 2018, uphold­ing con­vic­tions and death sen­tences in ten, revers­ing one death sen­tence, remand­ing one case for a new hear­ing on intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, and allow­ing lim­it­ed DNA test­ing in anoth­er case. The most notable of the deci­sions came in the cas­es of Gerald Murray (pic­tured left) and Steven Taylor (pic­tured, right), decid­ed on December 20,…

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…