Publications & Testimony

This week we are featuring some articles from the first part of 2025 that we think are worth another look. We’ll be back with new articles next week. This article was originally posted on April 30, 2025. In commemoration of the 20^th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision ending the juvenile death penalty, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) today released a new report: Immature Minds in a “Maturing Society”: Roper v. Simmons at 20, detailing growing support that…

This week we are featuring some articles from the first part of 2025 that we think are worth another look. We’ll be back with new articles next week. This article originally ran on February 11, 2025. When California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on executions in 2019, he said that the state’s “death penalty system has been, by all measures, a failure.” He explained that the death penalty “has discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, Black and brown, or can’t afford…

On August 19, 2025, the Utah Pardons Board denied Ralph Menzies’ petition for commutation, despite his worsening dementia, failing health, and evidence that his 1988 death sentence “was imposed in error” and “obtained using perjured testimony.” The Pardons Board was asked to commute his sentence to life without the possibility of parole (LWOP). According to reporting by the Utah News Dispatch, Utah’s Pardon Board has never granted clemency to a death-sentenced person. “Ralph Menzies is a…

In an August 14, 2025, op-ed in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman revealed he has “lived to regret” not commuting death sentences while he was in office, and criticized Florida’s execution selection process, citing serious concerns with secrecy and racial bias. Writing about two scheduled executions in Florida — Kayle Bates on August 19 and Curtis Windom on August 28 — Gov. Siegelman argues the cases surface systemic problems in Florida’s death penalty system.

After spending more than three decades behind bars for a crime he did not commit, Robert Melock was issued a Certificate of Innocence (COI), with a court formally clearing his name and ordering his record expunged. On April 21, 2025, the Circuit Court of the 19^th Judicial Circuit issued Mr. Melock the certificate following his December 2023 release from prison after 34 years of incarceration. His case is emblematic of the many problems known to result in wrongful death sentences: a coerced…

In the August 2025 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Melanie Kalmanson, a Florida attorney and author of the Substack newsletter Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty. Ms. Kalmanson’s newsletter compiles data on legislation, capital trials, death sentences, and executions in Florida. In the podcast, she discusses how she started following those developments, key events in the recent history of Florida’s death penalty, and why Florida has…

As of July 3, 2025, the Criminal Justice Act (CJA) program has run out of funds for the current fiscal year, threatening the quality and availability of federal defense counsel for the overwhelming majority of criminal defendants who cannot afford to hire their own lawyers. The budget Congress approved for the CJA program in March is $129 million less than what was requested by the Federal Judiciary. As a consequence, CJA appointed defense teams have been denied payment for their work since…

Over the past two weeks, two Florida death row prisoners filed fresh challenges to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ decisions to sign his tenth and eleventh death warrants of 2025. On July 29, 2025, Kayle Barrington Bates (also known as Maud Dib Al Sharif) brought a civil suit against Gov. DeSantis alleging Florida’s execution warrant process “is infected with racial discrimination and unconstitutional arbitrariness.” Included in the claim is a statistical analysis showing that “95% of the…

A prominent business executive and member of a larger coalition of over 500 global business leaders is calling on California Governor Gavin Newsom to commute all death sentences in California to life without parole. In a July 2025 op-ed, Matthew Stepka, a member of Business Leaders Against the Death Penalty, calls California’s death penalty system a failure of both justice and fiscal responsibility. “If any company or product I evaluated had an error rate comparable to the death penalty — where…