Publications & Testimony

The cap­i­tal charges filed against Tyler Robinson, the man accused of killing con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal activist Charlie Kirk on September 10^th, have drawn new atten­tion to Utah’s death penal­ty. Although Utah was among the first states to rein­state the death penal­ty after it was inval­i­dat­ed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, and the first to per­form an exe­cu­tion in the mod­ern era, exe­cu­tions have been rare over the last 50 years. Just eight peo­ple have been executed in…

Byron Black was exe­cut­ed in Tennessee by lethal injec­tion on August 5, 2025. During his exe­cu­tion, Mr. Black unex­pect­ed­ly and repeat­ed­ly groaned over the course of sev­er­al min­utes and audi­bly told his spir­i­tu­al advi­sor that he was in pain. An autop­sy released September 10, 2025, pro­vides some expla­na­tion. It found evi­dence of​“pul­monary con­ges­tion and ede­ma”– defined as an abnor­mal buildup of flu­id in the lungs which can pro­duce sen­sa­tions of​“doom,…

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 deci­sion in Atkins v. Virginia estab­lished that the Eighth Amendment pro­hibits exe­cut­ing peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. The Court lat­er clar­i­fied that rigid IQ cut­offs were not per­mis­si­ble and also required states to con­sid­er mean­ing­ful evi­dence of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, includ­ing sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly valid expert tes­ti­mo­ny and adap­tive func­tion­ing deficits. Despite this unequiv­o­cal constitutional protection,…

In​“Gendered Capital Punishment,” Cornell Law School Clinical Professor Sandra Babcock exam­ines how the gen­der of actors in cap­i­tal cas­es affects out­comes for women defen­dants. Professor Babcock’s research doc­u­ments that 96% of women cur­rent­ly sen­tenced to death in the US were pros­e­cut­ed by male pros­e­cu­tors, 89% appeared before male judges, and more than one-third had exclu­sive­ly male deci­­sion-mak­ers through­out their cas­es. These sta­tis­tics are rel­e­vant, says…

In late August 2025, the First District Court of Appeals of Ohio ruled that Hamilton County pros­e­cu­tors can­not use pri­or wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny in their retri­al of Elwood Jones, who was on Ohio’s death row for 27 years until he was grant­ed a new tri­al in December 2022. Mr. Jones was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of Rhoda Nathan in a Blue Ash, Ohio, hotel in 1994, despite con­sis­tent­ly main­tain­ing his inno­cence. In 2022, Hamilton County Common Pleas Court…

40 active death war­rants have been issued in the United States thus far in 2025 — more than a third of them were issued by one indi­vid­ual, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, in a process cloaked in secre­cy. The only two states that place author­i­ty sole­ly in the hands of the gov­er­nor to issue an exe­cu­tion war­rant are Florida, which has exe­cut­ed more indi­vid­u­als in 2025 than any oth­er state, and Pennsylvania, which has not exe­cut­ed any­one in over 25 years and where a…

In an op-ed for The Black Chronicle, Demetrius Minor (pic­tured), exec­u­tive direc­tor of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, argues that an uptick in exe­cu­tions in 2025​“represent[s] the past more than the present as a rem­nant of our nation’s for­mer affin­i­ty for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” Mr. Minor’s opin­ion finds sup­port in DPI’s recent mid year review, which notes that new death sen­tences in July were low­er than they were at the same time in 2024. The better…

When Chloe Beck was called for jury duty in ear­ly 2018, she ini­tial­ly viewed it as a poten­tial break from work. But she did not antic­i­pate that the case — involv­ing a nan­ny charged with the stab­bing deaths of two chil­dren — would have last­ing effects on her men­tal health. As an alter­nate juror in the sev­en-week tri­al, Ms. Beck was required to look at crime scene pho­tographs and hear tes­ti­mo­ny from the vic­tims’ par­ents. For Ms. Beck, the expe­ri­ence proved difficult to…