Publications & Testimony

On November 10, on the eve of Veterans’ Day, the Death Penalty Information Center released a new report, Battle Scars: Military Veterans and the Death Penalty. The report exam­ines the plight of U.S. mil­i­tary vet­er­ans who have been sen­tenced to death, esti­mat­ing that about 300 vet­er­ans are cur­rent­ly on death row. Many of these vet­er­ans suf­fer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or oth­er men­tal dis­abil­i­ties caused or exac­er­bat­ed by their time in…

On November 8, 1965, 50 years ago, the United Kingdom abol­ished cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. On that date, Parliament trans­mit­ted to Queen Elizabeth II for roy­al assent the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act of 1965. The Act, which end­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in England, Wales, and Scotland sub­ject to Parliamentary review after 5 years, took effect on November 9, 1965. When Parliament con­firmed the Act in December 1969, the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United Kingdom became per­ma­nent. The…

Calling the pun­ish­ment ​“sim­ply wrong,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has vowed to ​“nev­er stop call­ing for an end to the death penal­ty.” Speaking at the launch of a new book by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, ​“Moving Away from the Death Penalty: Arguments, Trends and Perspectives,” the Secretary-General high­light­ed the world­wide decline of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, not­ing that ​“more and more coun­tries and States are abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty.” Data from the…

Oklahoma County has exe­cut­ed 41 pris­on­ers since 1976, the third high­est in the coun­try, and is among the 2% of American coun­ties respon­si­ble for 56% of the men and women cur­rent­ly on the nation’s death rows. A ThinkProgress report chron­i­cles the decades-long pat­tern of mis­con­duct com­mit­ted under its long-time District Attorney ​“Cowboy Bob” Macy…

Prisoners sen­tenced to death in the small num­ber of U.S. coun­ties that most aggres­sive­ly pur­sue the death penal­ty often suf­fer the ​“dou­ble wham­my” of get­ting ​“both the dead­liest pros­e­cu­tors in America and some of the country’s worst cap­i­tal defense lawyers,” accord­ing to an arti­cle in Slate by Robert L. Smith. In review­ing the the unusu­al­ly high num­bers of death ver­dicts from 3 coun­ties that are near the top of the nation in dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly pro­duc­ing death sen­tences over the last…

Ernest Johnson (pic­tured) is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Missouri on November 3, despite strong evi­dence that he is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and there­fore inel­i­gi­ble for…

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argu­ment in Foster v. Chatman on November 2. Timothy Foster, an intel­lec­tu­al­ly lim­it­ed black teenag­er charged with killing an elder­ly white woman, was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1987 by an all-white jury after Georgia pros­e­cu­tors struck every black mem­ber of the jury pool. Foster argued that pros­e­cu­tors imper­mis­si­bly exer­cised their strikes on the basis of race, in vio­la­tion of the Court’s 1986 deci­sion in…

The U.S. Department of Justice released its annu­al FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2014, report­ing no change in the nation­al mur­der rate since 2013. In the Northeast, the region with the fewest exe­cu­tions, the mur­der rate declined 5.7%, from 3.5 to 3.3 per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion. The mur­der rate was 1.7 times high­er in the South, which car­ries out the most exe­cu­tions of any region. That region saw a 3.4% increase in the homi­cide rate, and its 5.5 murders…

Capital pun­ish­ment is dom­i­nat­ing the dis­cus­sion in the runoff elec­tion between James E. Stewart, Sr. and Dhu Thompson to suc­ceed act­ing Caddo Parish, Louisiana District Attorney Dale Cox. Cox’s con­tro­ver­sial state­ments about the death penal­ty — includ­ing that the state needs to ​“kill more peo­ple” — have focused nation­al atten­tion on the parish, which ranks among the two per­cent of U.S. coun­ties respon­si­ble for 56 per­cent of the inmates on death row…