Publications & Testimony

(Washington, D.C.) The Death Penalty Information Center today released a new report, ​“Behind the Curtain: Secrecy and the Death Penalty in the United States.” The inten­sive study doc­u­ments the laws and poli­cies that states have adopt­ed to keep infor­ma­tion about exe­cu­tions inac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic, to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies, and to pris­on­ers fac­ing exe­cu­tion. Among the key…

On November 13, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review sev­en death-penal­ty cas­es in which Florida courts had upheld death sen­tences imposed with uncon­sti­tu­tion­al sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures. The Court’s deci­sion not to hear the sev­en Florida cas­es prompt­ed opin­ions from three jus­tices that high­light the deep sub­stan­tive and pro­ce­dur­al divide in the Court’s approach to capital…

During his elec­tion cam­paign, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner described the eco­nom­ic waste­ful­ness of city pros­e­cu­tors’ pur­suit of the death penal­ty as ​“light­ing mon­ey on fire.” A DPIC analy­sis of the out­comes of the more than 200 death sen­tences imposed in the city since 1978 (click here to enlarge image) and the last sev­en years of cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion out­comes pro­vides strong sup­port for Krasner’s…

As Witness to Innocence (WTI), an orga­ni­za­tion of U.S. death-row exonerees and their fam­i­lies, pre­pared to mark its 15^th anniver­sary on November 15, 2018, two of the country’s most promi­nent exonerees — WTI’s act­ing direc­tor, Kirk Bloodsworth (pic­tured, left), and its board chair, Kwame Ajamu (pic­tured, right) — called for an end to the death penal­ty in the United States. In an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the two exonerees told the sto­ries of…

In a fea­ture arti­cle in Politico, Lara Bazelon, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the University of San Francisco School of Law and author of the new book, Rectify: The Power of Restorative Justice After Wrongful Conviction, describes an exon­er­a­tion as ​“an earth­quake [that] leaves upheaval and ruin in its wake.” Exonerees, she writes, ​“suf­fer hor­ri­bly — both phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly — in prison” and are revic­tim­ized fol­low­ing their release, ​“leav[ing] prison with no ready access to…

United Nations human rights offi­cials have urged the gov­ern­ment of the United States to halt the immi­nent exe­cu­tion of a Mexican nation­al who was tried and sen­tenced to death in Texas in vio­la­tion of U.S. treaty oblig­a­tions. Texas is sched­uled to exe­cute Roberto Moreno Ramos (pic­tured) on November 14, in an action an inter­na­tion­al human rights court has said would vio­late the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Agnes Callamard, the U.N.

As Americans become increas­ing­ly aware of the role of com­bat trau­ma in the devel­op­ment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and oth­er men­tal health dis­or­ders, the shift in pub­lic per­cep­tions towards vet­er­ans suf­fer­ing from these dis­or­ders has played out in the courts in recent death penal­ty cas­es. In 2018, at least four mil­i­tary vet­er­ans fac­ing death sen­tences have instead been sen­tenced to life in prison, and anoth­er two vet­er­ans won relief in their death-penal­ty cas­es. One military…

The Florida Supreme Court has over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on Eriese Tisdale (pic­tured) in 2016 in vio­la­tion of a Florida law that had been enact­ed in an attempt to fix con­sti­tu­tion­al flaws in the state’s death-penal­ty statute. The state court ruled on November 8, 2018, that St. Lucie County Circuit Judge Dan Vaughn’s deci­sion to sen­tence Tisdale to death after three mem­bers of the jury had vot­ed to spare his life vio­lat­ed both a Florida law that…

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argu­ment on November 6, 2018 in Bucklew v. Precythe on whether the use of lethal injec­tion to exe­cute a Missouri pris­on­er with a rare med­ical con­di­tion would cause him unnec­es­sary and excru­ci­at­ing pain and suf­fer­ing and whether he was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly required to pro­vide the state with a dif­fer­ent way for it to kill him. Media reports sug­gest­ed that the Court was sharply divid­ed on the issue with…

The results of the November 6, 2018 mid-term elec­tions reflect­ed America’s deeply divid­ed views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, as vot­ers elect­ed gov­er­nors who pledged not to resume exe­cu­tions in the three states with death-penal­ty mora­to­ri­ums, defeat­ed an incum­bent who tried to bring back cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in a non-death-penal­ty state (click on graph­ic to enlarge), and re-elect­ed gov­er­nors who had vetoed leg­is­la­tion abol­ish­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in two oth­er states. Continuing a nation­al trend,…