Publications & Testimony

The Delaware Supreme Court on August 2 declared the state’s cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, leav­ing Delaware with­out a valid death penal­ty statute. In the case of Benjamin Rauf v. State of Delaware, the court held that Delaware’s death sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures vio­late the con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ples recent­ly set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court’s January 2016 deci­sion in Hurst v. Florida.

On August 1, The Movement for Black Lives issued a 40-point pol­i­cy plat­form that includes a call for the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The plat­form, which was writ­ten or endorsed by more than 60 activist groups includ­ing the Black Lives Matter Network, describes its pur­pose as​“articulat[ing] our vision of a fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent world.” The por­tion of the plat­form seek­ing​“an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment” calls the death penal­ty​“moral­ly repug­nant,” and…

Nearly three-quar­ters of Kentuckians (72.4%) would sup­port a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions while prob­lems in the admin­is­tra­tion of Kentucky’s death penal­ty are addressed, accord­ing to a new poll released on August 1 by the University of Kentucky Survey Research Center. Nearly two-thirds (62.6%) of those who said they sup­port the death penal­ty were nev­er­the­less in favor of a mora­to­ri­um. The poll also found that 57.8% of respon­dents pre­ferred a lengthy prison…

Cert. grant­ed Oct. 1, 2015Argument: Feb. 29, 2016Decided: June…

An ini­tia­tive on the California bal­lot this November billed by its sup­port­ers as a reform alter­na­tive to abol­ish­ing the state’s death penal­ty will cost the state tens of mil­lions of dol­lars to imple­ment, accord­ing to an analy­sis by the Alarcón Advocacy Center at Loyola Law School, and​“will not speed…

Twenty years ago, frus­trat­ed by what they per­ceived to be the slow pace of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, Colorado leg­is­la­tors adopt­ed a law to​“fix” their death penal­ty by speed­ing up appeals. Proponents and oppo­nents of the state’s death penal­ty agree on one thing: the law has­n’t worked. As The Denver Post reports, the state law intend­ed to stream­line the death penal­ty appeals process by impos­ing a two-year dead­line for deci­sion and consolidating…

On July 19, the new­ly con­sti­tut­ed Pennsylvania Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to uphold a tri­al court’s order grant­i­ng a new tri­al to Philadelphia death row pris­on­er, Christopher…

Doyle Lee Hamm (pic­tured), an Alabama death row pris­on­er, has asked the United States Supreme Court to con­sid­er his case after Alabama’s state and fed­er­al appel­late courts upheld an order in which the tri­al court reject­ed his appeal by adopt­ing word-for-word an 89-page order writ­ten by the state attor­ney gen­er­al’s office. In a process The Marshall Project’s Andrew Cohen described as​“a sham,” the court dis­missed Hamm’s appeal one busi­ness day after…

As sup­port for the death penal­ty has waxed and waned over the years, the views of the major U.S. polit­i­cal par­ties, as reflect­ed in their nation­al con­ven­tion plat­forms, has changed. To track those changes, DPIC has cre­at­ed a new resource pre­sent­ing the Democratic and Republican par­ty plat­form posi­tions on crime and the death penal­ty from 1960 to 2016. With the most recent views of both the Republican and Democratic par­ties expressed in their 2016…

On July 21, a divid­ed Arkansas Supreme Court vot­ed 4 – 3 to deny a request by state death row pris­on­ers to recon­sid­er its recent deci­sion uphold­ing Arkansas’ lethal injec­tion pro­to­col and secre­cy law, but in anoth­er 4 – 3 vote, the court issued an order stay­ing the man­date, delay­ing the deci­sion from tak­ing effect until the U.S. Supreme Court has an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­sid­er an appeal. The stay order pre­vents the state from setting new…