Publications & Testimony

This month, DPIC cel­e­brates Women’s History Month with week­ly pro­files of notable women whose work was sig­nif­i­cant in the mod­ern death penal­ty era. The first entry in this series is U.S. District Court Judge…

The Georgia Attorney General has announced that Willie James Pye, who pre­vi­ous­ly had his death sen­tence reversed due to his attorney’s fail­ure to inves­ti­gate his back­ground, only to see the death sen­tence rein­stat­ed on appeal, is set to be exe­cut­ed on March 20. Mr. Pye’s court-appoint­ed tri­al attor­ney, Johnny Mostiler, has been accused of inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion or racial bias in at least four cas­es involv­ing Black defen­dants and report­ed­ly called one of his own…

In the after­math of Idaho’s failed exe­cu­tion of Thomas Creech and Texas’ exe­cu­tion of Ivan Cantu on February 28, the European Union released a state­ment express­ing its regret and reit­er­at­ing its unequiv­o­cal oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty.. “[The death penal­ty] is a vio­la­tion of the right to life and fails to act as a deter­rent to crime. It rep­re­sents the ulti­mate pun­ish­ment that makes mis­car­riages of jus­tice irre­versible,” said the state­ment. “[W]e are concerned…

On February 28, 2023, the Oklahoma House Criminal Justice and Corrections Committee unan­i­mous­ly passed a bill that would pause all pend­ing exe­cu­tions and pro­hib­it new death sen­tences while an inde­pen­dent task force reviews cur­rent Oklahoma death penal­ty pro­ce­dures. House Bill 3138, also known as the Death Penalty Moratorium Act, was intro­duced by Republican Representative Kevin McDugle and would cre­ate a five-mem­ber Death Penalty Reform Task Force to​“study and report on…

On February 27, 2024, Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara A. McDermott approved a motion from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office to dis­miss first-degree mur­der, arson, and aggra­vat­ed assault charges against 54-year-old death-sen­­tenced pris­on­er Daniel Gwynn. Mr. Gwynn is the 197^th per­son exon­er­at­ed after being sen­tenced to death since 1973, accord­ing to DPIC’s Innocence Database.​“Today is most­ly for us a day of tremen­dous relief and sad­ness, a guy like him, an innocent…

Thomas Creech and…

This month, DPIC cel­e­brates Black History Month with week­ly pro­files of notable Black Americans whose work affect­ed the mod­ern death penal­ty era. The fourth and final entry in this series is lawyer and civ­il rights activist Elaine Jones, for­mer pres­i­dent and direc­­tor-coun­sel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and coun­sel of record in Furman v.

A new report from the Texas Defender Service (TDS) titled​“Arbitrary and Capricious: Examining Racial Disparities in Harris County’s Pursuit of Death Sentences” was pub­lished on February 22, 2024 and is the lat­est in series of TDS reports on use of the death penal­ty in Texas. The report focus­es on Harris County’s out­lier death penal­ty prac­tices, both with­in the state and nation­al­ly. While more than half of the 254 coun­ties in Texas have nev­er imposed a death sen­tence, Harris…

Beginning February 28, 2024, a Johnston County, North Carolina, tri­al court will hear death row pris­on­er Hasson Bacote’s claims that racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selec­tion played a role in his cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing. In 2009, North Carolina passed the Racial Justice Act (RJA), which allowed death-sen­­tenced pris­on­ers to chal­lenge their sen­tences if they could demon­strate that race played a role in their sen­tenc­ing and jury selec­tion. Sentenced to death in 2009 by a nearly…