Publications & Testimony

Nations that abolish the death penalty then tend to see their murder rates decline, according to a December 2018 report by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, a Washington, DC-based organization that promotes human rights and democracy in Iran. The report examined murder rates in 11 countries that have abolished capital punishment, finding that ten of those countries experienced a decline in murder rates in the decade following abolition. Countries were included if they met the following…

The Florida Supreme Court issued rulings in thirteen death penalty cases in the last two weeks of 2018, upholding convictions and death sentences in ten, reversing one death sentence, remanding one case for a new hearing on intellectual disability, and allowing limited DNA testing in another case. The most notable of the decisions came in the cases of Gerald Murray (pictured left) and Steven Taylor (pictured, right), decided on December 20, 2018, who were sentenced to death for the same murder…

The retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy from the U.S. Supreme Court after the 2017 – 2018 court term and his replacement with Justice Brett Kavanaugh marked a potentially pivotal change in the constitution of the Court with respect to death-penalty issues. During Justice Kennedy’s thirty years on the Court, he became known as a swing vote, siding with both the conservative and liberal wings of the Court. His role as the Court’s swing vote extended to death-penalty cases, in which he provided…

2018 was a record-low year for death-penalty usage in the United States, as eighteen death-penalty states set or matched records for the fewest new death sentences imposed in the modern history of U.S. capital punishment. (Click here to enlarge map.) Thirty-five U.S. states — including sixteen that authorized capital punishment in 2018 — did not impose any death sentences in 2018, while California and Pennsylvania, which collectively account for nearly one-third of the nation’s death-row…

The R Street Institute, a Washington-based policy think tank, has joined the growing number of conservative voices advocating for death-penalty abolition. In a commentary in the November/December 2018 issue of The American Conservative, the institute’s criminal justice and civil liberties policy director Arthur Rizer (pictured, left) and its Southeast region director Marc Hyden (pictured, right) argue that “the closer conservatism remains to its core values, the more credibility it brings to…

Empowered by the results of the November 2018 mid-term elections, legislatures in at least four states are poised to renew efforts to repeal their states’ death-penalty statutes or drastically reduce the circumstances in which capital punishment is available. State legislative and gubernatorial elections in Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Oregon have redefined the local political landscape in 2019 in ways that death-penalty abolitionists say have made those bills more likely to succeed.

Death-row exoneree Ron Keine (pictured) reflects on spending the holidays on death row: It is Christmas time on the row. At night I can hear the muffled sounds of a grown man crying in his pillow. His trusty pillow which is his only safe confidant as emotions are seen as weakness in prison and can even get you killed. Everywhere in the world it is a time for happiness, a time to rejoice, but here on death row it is depression and sadness in the very souls of us death row denizens. I miss the…