Publications & Testimony

On June 1, 2024, an Idaho jury sen­tenced Chad Daybell to death for the 2019 mur­ders of his first wife and his sec­ond wife’s two youngest chil­dren. Mr. Daybell plead­ed not guilty to mul­ti­ple first-degree mur­der, fraud, and con­spir­a­cy charges, but after being found guilty, he chose to waive his right to present mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence dur­ing his sen­tenc­ing hear­ing. With this deci­sion, Mr. Daybell declined the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide the jury with rea­sons why he should not be sen­tenced to death.

On May 7, 2024, Harm Reduction International (HRI) released a spe­cial glob­al overview report on the use of the death penal­ty for drug offens­es, which is a vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law because drug offens­es do not meet the ​“most seri­ous” crimes thresh­old. HRI found that by the end of 2023, there were 34 coun­tries which still retained the death penal­ty for drug-relat­ed offens­es; Pakistan was the only coun­try to recent­ly elim­i­nate the death penal­ty for such offens­es – the first coun­try in more…

Florida Supreme Court in Tallahassee,…

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Lamont Hunter (pic­tured), a for­mer Ohio death-sen­­tenced pris­on­er who was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of caus­ing the death of his three-year-old son. After near­ly 18 years of incar­cer­a­tion, Mr. Hunter was released from Ohio’s death row on June 15, 2023, after plead­ing guilty to less­er charges in exchange for his free­dom. Since his release, Mr. Hunter has spo­ken wide­ly about his…

According to Amnesty International’s annu­al death penal­ty report for 2023, 16 coun­tries car­ried out the 1,153 known exe­cu­tions last year, con­sti­tut­ing the low­est num­ber of exe­cut­ing coun­tries on record with the orga­ni­za­tion but the high­est record­ed exe­cu­tion num­bers since 2015. The 31% glob­al increase in record­ed exe­cu­tions is attrib­ut­able to the 48% rise in exe­cu­tions in Iran (at least 853 exe­cu­tions), which account­ed for 74% of recorded executions…

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the impact of men­tal ill­ness is keen­ly felt on death row: at least two in five peo­ple exe­cut­ed have a doc­u­ment­ed seri­ous men­tal ill­ness, and research sug­gests that many more death-sen­­tenced pris­on­ers are undi­ag­nosed. A nation­al major­i­ty, 60% of Americans, oppos­es exe­cut­ing peo­ple with seri­ous men­tal ill­ness. In the past two decades, sci­ence and med­i­cine have con­tributed to a much bet­ter under­stand­ing of how serious…

Madison County,…

Robert Roberson with daugh­ter Nikki. Courtesy of the…

Delaware County, Pennsylvania…

On May 20, 2024, Jefferson County, Alabama District Attorney Danny Carr asked a cir­cuit judge to grant a new tri­al to Toforest Johnson (cen­ter), an Alabama death row pris­on­er whose con­vic­tion DA Carr believes is​“fun­da­men­tal­ly unre­li­able.” This extra­or­di­nary request is the lat­est in a series of appeals for Mr. Johnson, who was sen­tenced to death in 1998 for the 1995 mur­der of Jefferson County Deputy Sheriff William Hardy but has always main­tained his inno­cence.​“A…