Publications & Testimony

As vot­ers get set to cast bal­lots on death penal­ty ques­tions in California, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, U.S. death row exonerees from across the coun­try have been scour­ing those states in an effort to inform the pub­lic of the risks of wrong­ful exe­cu­tions. On September 19, 17 of the nation’s 156 death-row exonerees appeared at a California press con­fer­ence advo­cat­ing approval of Proposition 62, which would replace…

The death-sen­­tenc­ing rate per homi­cide in Caddo Parish, Louisiana was near­ly 8 times greater between 2006 and 2015 than the rest of the state, mak­ing a parish with only 5% of Louisiana’s pop­u­la­tion respon­si­ble for 38% of the death sen­tences imposed statewide. Caddo cur­rent­ly has more peo­ple on death row than any other parish…

A poll of like­ly California vot­ers con­duct­ed joint­ly by The Field Poll and the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley has found con­tin­u­ing ero­sion of sup­port for the death penal­ty in the state and near-major­i­­ty sup­port for Proposition 62, a bal­lot ques­tion to replace the state’s death penal­ty with a sys­tem of life impris­on­ment with­out parole, plus resti­tu­tion. The poll found sig­nif­i­cant vot­er confusion about…

Semon Frank Thompson (pic­tured), a for­mer super­in­ten­dent at the Oregon State Penitentiary, over­saw both of the exe­cu­tions car­ried out under Oregon’s death penal­ty statute. He now believes that​“cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is a failed…

A September 20 report by the Texas Defender Service says that Texas​“has failed to ensure effec­tive coun­sel” for appel­lants in cap­i­tal cas­es and that the state’s sys­tem of review­ing death penal­ty cas­es on direct appeal is​“in dire need of reform.” The report, titled Lethally Deficient, reviewed all 84 cap­i­tal direct appeals decid­ed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) from 2009 to 2015 and identified…

Newspaper edi­to­r­i­al boards in California are over­whelm­ing­ly sup­port­ing a November bal­lot ini­tia­tive to abol­ish the state’s death penal­ty and replace it with life with­out parole plus resti­tu­tion, and are uni­form­ly reject­ing an oppos­ing ini­tia­tive that pur­ports to speed up the appeals process. At least eight California news­pa­pers have pub­lished edi­to­ri­als sup­port­ing Proposition 62 and oppos­ing Proposition 66, and Ballotpedia reports that it is…

Judicial over­ride of jury rec­om­men­da­tions of life, the impo­si­tion of death sen­tences after non-unan­i­­mous jury sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tions, and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, race bias, and inef­fec­tive defense coun­sel have made Mobile County, Alabama one of the most pro­lif­ic death sen­tenc­ing coun­ties in the…

For the first time in two decades, Oklahoma will go at least two years with­out an exe­cu­tion. As part of an agree­ment in a fed­er­al law­suit brought by the state’s death row pris­on­ers, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (pic­tured) has said the state will not request exe­cu­tion dates for at least five months after the state adopts a new exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. Because of this, when the Oklahoma Board of Corrections met on September 13, 2016, the…

Today, DPIC launch­es a new pod­cast series,​“Discussions With DPIC,” which will fea­ture month­ly, unscript­ed con­ver­sa­tions with death penal­ty experts on a wide vari­ety of top­ics. The inau­gur­al episode fea­tures a con­ver­sa­tion between Texas Defender Services staff attor­ney Kate Black (pic­tured) and DPIC host Anne Holsinger, who dis­cuss the case of Jeffery Wood and Texas’ unusu­al legal doc­trine known as the…

Roger King, a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor in Philadelphia who at one point was respon­si­ble for 20% of all the death sen­tences imposed in Pennsylvania, died of kid­ney can­cer on August 24. When King retired in 2008, he held the record for most death sen­tences obtained by a sin­gle Pennsylvania pros­e­cu­tor. None of the men he sent to death row has ever…