Publications & Testimony

Doug Evans, the District Attorney who tried death row exoneree Curtis Flowers for mur­der six times, is retir­ing. Mr. Flowers received four death sen­tences, but each con­vic­tion was over­turned when courts found that Evans had ille­gal­ly exclud­ed Black jurors from the jury pool.

The Death Penalty Information Center main­tains an up-to-date list of sched­uled exe­cu­tions and out­comes of death war­rants issued by the states and fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. Updated each busi­ness day, the Upcoming Executions page con­tains inter­ac­tive maps dis­play­ing the cur­rent num­ber of active death war­rants, as well as the total num­ber of exe­cu­tions sched­uled for each year, through 2026. There are also tables list­ing addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about each of these cases.

On July 5, 2023, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (pic­tured) filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in sup­port of death row pris­on­er Richard Glossip’s peti­tion for a writ of cer­tio­rari. The Innocence Project and six legal schol­ars have also filed briefs in sup­port of Mr. Glossip, while the victim’s fam­i­ly and the Oklahoma District Attorneys Association have filed a brief in opposition.

On June 29, 2023, Missouri Governor Mike Parson (pic­tured) lift­ed the stay of exe­cu­tion for Marcellus Williams, a death-sen­tenced pris­on­er con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Felisha Gayle, a for­mer St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter in 1998. Governor Parson also dis­solved the Board of Inquiry, a judi­cial pan­el appoint­ed by for­mer Missouri Governor Eric Greitens to review evi­dence of inno­cence and pro­vide rec­om­men­da­tions on Mr. Williams’s appli­ca­tion for exec­u­tive clemency.

A bill that Idaho Governor Brad Little signed into law in March 2023, autho­riz­ing the use of the fir­ing squad as a method of exe­cu­tion, went into effect on July 1, 2023. This law grants the direc­tor of Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) the author­i­ty to deter­mine if lethal injec­tion is avail­able and, if deemed unavail­able, to car­ry out the exe­cu­tion by fir­ing squad.

A total of 68 exe­cu­tions have occurred in Saudi Arabia this year, with more than 20 exe­cu­tions relat­ing to ter­ror­ism charges occur­ring since ear­ly May, accord­ing to Agence France-Presse. On July 3, five men, includ­ing one Egyptian nation­al, were exe­cut­ed for a dead­ly attack on a house of wor­ship in the Al-Ahsa gov­er­norate, result­ing in five dead and sev­er­al injured. On June 25, two Yemeni nation­als were exe­cut­ed on ter­ror­ism charges, and on June 12, three Saudi men were exe­cut­ed for the killing of a secu­ri­ty offi­cer and ter­ror­ism charges.

As Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards (pic­tured) con­sid­ers the clemen­cy peti­tions filed by 51 of the state’s 57 death row pris­on­ers, advo­cates and jour­nal­ists have not­ed the sim­i­lar­i­ties between Louisiana’s death penal­ty sys­tem and that of Illinois, where Governor George Ryan com­mut­ed the sen­tences of all 167 peo­ple on death row in 2003. Both states have had high num­bers of death row exon­er­a­tions stem­ming from sys­temic mis­con­duct, death sen­tences in both states are con­cen­trat­ed in a small num­ber of juris­dic­tions, and both gov­er­nors have expressed seri­ous per­son­al con­cerns about the…

On June 28, 2023, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) denied Rodney Reed’s (pic­tured) appli­ca­tion for habeas relief and reject­ed Mr. Reed’s claim that pros­e­cu­tors at his 1998 tri­al ille­gal­ly pre­sent­ed false tes­ti­mo­ny and with­held excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence that could have exon­er­at­ed him. His case gained inter­na­tion­al atten­tion in 2019 when a bipar­ti­san group of law­mak­ers urged Republican Governor Abbot to stop his exe­cu­tion. Throughout his incar­cer­a­tion, he has con­tin­ued to main­tain his innocence. 

A forth­com­ing law review arti­cle tack­les big ques­tions about pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. The Brady Database focus­es on the prin­ci­ple stat­ed in the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland: that the gov­ern­men­t’s with­hold­ing of evi­dence that is mate­r­i­al to the deter­mi­na­tion of either guilt or pun­ish­ment of a crim­i­nal defen­dant vio­lates the defen­dan­t’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to due process. While the arti­cle focus­es on Brady claims in crim­i­nal law gen­er­al­ly, these claims are often raised by death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers on appeal, as demon­strat­ed by DPIC’s Prosecutorial Accountability project, which lists more than 200…

June 28, 2023 marks the 30^th anniver­sary of the exon­er­a­tion of Kirk Bloodsworth (pic­tured), the first per­son exon­er­at­ed from death row with DNA evi­dence. In the three decades since he was exon­er­at­ed from Maryland’s death row, Mr. Bloodsworth has been a vocal advo­cate for crim­i­nal jus­tice reform. He played an essen­tial role in end­ing the death penal­ty in Maryland in 2013 and served as direc­tor of Witness to Innocence, an orga­ni­za­tion of death row exonerees.