Publications & Testimony

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…

With the sup­port of a record 120 nations, the United Nations General Assembly adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion on December 17, 2018 call­ing for a world­wide mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty. The res­o­lu­tion expressed ​“deep con­cern” over the use of the death penal­ty and urged those coun­tries that con­tin­ue to use it to take action to ensure that death sen­tences are not the prod­uct of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry or arbi­trary laws or prac­tices. The mora­to­ri­um res­o­lu­tion, pro­posed this year by Brazil and…

Six for­mer gov­er­nors have urged California Governor Jerry Brown (pic­tured) to ​“be coura­geous in lead­er­ship” and grant clemen­cy to the 740 men and women on California’s death row before he leaves office on January 7, 2019. In a December 13 op-ed in the New York Times, the for­mer gov­er­nors — Ohio’s Richard Celeste, Oregon’s John Kitzhaber, Maryland’s Martin O’Malley, New Mexico’s Bill Richardson and Toney Anaya, and Illinois’s Pat Quinn — wrote that ​“Mr. Brown has the…

The long-term decline of death-penal­ty use in the U.S. con­tin­ued in 2018, as a twen­ti­eth state abol­ished cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and exe­cu­tions and new death sen­tences remained near gen­er­a­tional lows. On October 11, the Washington State Supreme Court struck down the state’s death penal­ty, find­ing that it was imposed arbi­trar­i­ly and in a racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry man­ner. Washington became the eighth state to leg­isla­tive­ly or judi­cial­ly abol­ish the death penal­ty since 2007. According to the…

A group of jus­tice-reform orga­ni­za­tions has issued a new report, 21 Principles for the 21^st Century Prosecutor, that calls on pros­e­cu­tors to ​“work to end the death penal­ty” as part of its rec­om­mend­ed reforms in pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al prac­tices. The report, pre­pared joint­ly by the orga­ni­za­tions Fair and Just Prosecution, the Brennan Center for Justice, and the Justice Collaborative, sets forth a series of prin­ci­ples that the groups say are…

Mark Heyer, whose daugh­ter, Heather Heyer (pic­tured), was killed in 2017 while protest­ing a white suprema­cist ral­ly in Charlottesville, Virginia, says he does not want fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors to pur­sue the death penal­ty against the man who killed his daugh­ter. James Alex Fields, Jr., a 21-year-old who iden­ti­fies as a neo-Nazi, was tried in Virginia state court and con­vict­ed of mur­der and a litany of oth­er crimes for dri­ving a car…

Texas is sched­uled to exe­cute Alvin Braziel, Jr. on December 11, 2018, in what would be the state’s 13^th exe­cu­tion of the year. Braziel was 18 years old in 1993 when he killed a man and sex­u­al­ly assault­ed a woman after a failed rob­bery attempt. His age places him just above the legal bound­ary to be eli­gi­ble for a death sen­tence, though recent neu­ro­science research on brain devel­op­ment indi­cates the deficits in judg­ment and impulse con­trol that led the United States Court to…

On December 10, 2018, the United Nations and oth­er inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions cel­e­brat­ed Human Rights Day, mark­ing the 70^th anniver­sary of the adop­tion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration, which has served as a foun­da­tion for the UN’s efforts to abol­ish the death penal­ty, con­tains 30 arti­cles stat­ing uni­ver­sal­ly applic­a­ble rights based on the ​“inher­ent dig­ni­ty” and ​“equal and inalien­able rights of all mem­bers of the human fam­i­ly.” Article 3…