Publications & Testimony

Iran con­tin­ues to use the death penal­ty in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law, includ­ing death sen­tences for crimes fail­ing to meet the ​“most seri­ous” crime thresh­old, the use of tor­ture, and per­form­ing pub­lic exe­cu­tions. According to Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), there have been at least 277 exe­cu­tions thus far in 2023, with at least 106 exe­cu­tions in the first 20 days of May, con­sti­tut­ing the ​“blood­i­est month” in more than five years.

A May 20, 2023 edi­to­r­i­al in a lead­ing med­ical aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nal con­cludes that physi­cian par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­tions ​“goes against the eth­i­cal foun­da­tion of the physi­cian’s role” and argues that doc­tors and med­ical asso­ci­a­tions should oppose cap­i­tal punishment. 

The num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death or fac­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a death sen­tence in pend­ing cap­i­tal retri­al or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings con­tin­ued its more than two-decade decline in the third quar­ter of last year, accord­ing to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) Summer 2022 quar­ter­ly cen­sus of death rows across the United States. 

UPDATE 2: On June 2, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit lift­ed the stay that had been imposed by the U.S. District Court, say­ing that the low­er court did not have juris­dic­tion to order the stay.

On May 11, attor­neys for Robert Roberson, a death-sen­tenced pris­on­er in Texas, filed a peti­tion for cer­tio­rari to the Supreme Court ask­ing it to reverse the deci­sion of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA). Mr. Roberson’s con­vic­tion for the mur­der of his daugh­ter Nikki was based on the so-called ​“Shaken Baby Syndrome” which has now been debunked by new sci­en­tif­ic and med­ical evi­dence. The TCCA dis­re­gard­ed this and oth­er evi­dence that showed his daughter’s death was attrib­ut­able to nat­ur­al and acci­den­tal causes. 

According to an annu­al death penal­ty report by Amnesty International, 2022 saw the high­est num­ber of record­ed exe­cu­tions since 2017, pri­mar­i­ly due to increas­es in just a hand­ful of coun­tries in the Middle East and North Africa. The report also not­ed a slight decrease in the num­ber of new­ly imposed death sen­tences world­wide. In its report, Amnesty says use of the death penal­ty in sev­er­al coun­tries con­tin­ues to vio­late inter­na­tion­al law with pub­lic exe­cu­tions, exe­cu­tions of juve­niles or those with men­tal or intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties, unfair tri­al pro­ceed­ings, and coerced confessions…

Over a decade ago, four audio tapes and hun­dreds of exe­cu­tion doc­u­ments were donat­ed to the Library of the University of Virginia by a for­mer Virginia cor­rec­tion­al employ­ee. National Public Radio (NPR) aired excerpts from those long-hid­den tapes in January 2023. Shortly there­after, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) then request­ed the return of all the mate­ri­als. NPR now reports that only two of the six box­es of mate­r­i­al remain avail­able for view­ing at the prison, by way of a pub­lic records request. The entire­ty of the…

The Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to announce that Robin M. Maher has joined the orga­ni­za­tion as Executive Director, effec­tive May 15, 2023. Most recent­ly, Ms. Maher was Senior Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Access to Justice. Ms. Maher pre­vi­ous­ly worked in the fed­er­al defend­er sys­tem and at the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and has more than twen­ty years’ expe­ri­ence train­ing lawyers and judges in the United States and around the world. She was Director of the American Bar Association (ABA) Death Penalty…

Occasionally, DPIC dis­cov­ers an old­er case involv­ing an exon­er­a­tion from death row and adds that case to the DPIC Innocence List. Joe Cota Morales was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Arizona in 1976 and was exon­er­at­ed in 1981. He has now been added to the Innocence List, bring­ing the total num­ber of death-row exon­er­a­tions to 192.

On May 9, 2023, the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee held its first hear­ing on Senate Bill 101 that would abol­ish the state’s death penal­ty. The co-spon­sors of the bill, Senate Democratic Leader Nickie Antonio (D‑Lakewood) and Senator Stephen Huffman (R‑Tipp City), argued in favor of the bill’s pas­sage and not­ed that more than one-third of Ohio’s sen­a­tors have signed on as sponsors.