Publications & Testimony

For the sec­ond time in less than six months, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has upheld a death sen­tence that the tri­al court, lawyers for the pros­e­cu­tion and defense, and men­tal health experts all agree should not be car­ried out. On November 21, 2018, in an unpub­lished and unsigned opin­ion that mis­spelled death-row pris­on­er Jeffery Wood​’s name, the court reject­ed a rec­om­men­da­tion by the Kerr County District Court to overturn…

On November 21, 2018, Kentucky marked 10 years since its last exe­cu­tion, becom­ing the eleventh cur­rent death-penal­ty state that has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in more than a decade. Another 20 states have leg­isla­tive­ly or judi­cial­ly abol­ished their death-penal­ty laws, bring­ing the num­ber of states that do not active­ly use the death penal­ty to 31. On the day before Kentucky reached its 10-year mile­stone, a law­suit filed in fed­er­al court high­light­ed some of the greatest…

The Tennessee Supreme Court has set exe­cu­tion dates for six men on the state’s death row, sched­ul­ing their exe­cu­tions for between May 16, 2019 and April 9, 2020. This mass exe­cu­tion sched­ule, issued on November 16, 2018, comes in the wake of the con­tro­ver­sial exe­cu­tions of Billy Ray Irick and Edmund Zagorski ear­li­er this year and as the state pre­pares to exe­cute David Earl Miller on December 6. If all seven scheduled…

The Death Penalty Information Center has released a major new report, Behind the Curtain: Secrecy and the Death Penalty in the United States, exam­in­ing the scope and con­se­quences of secre­cy in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in the United…

(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.