Publications & Testimony

Prosecutors across the coun­try are seek­ing the death penal­ty less fre­quent­ly and in recent inter­views two dis­trict attor­neys, one from Texas and one from Pennsylvania, have giv­en some of their rea­sons why. Randall County, Texas District Attorney James Farren (pic­tured) told KFDA-TV in Amarillo that his expe­ri­ence han­dling one par­tic­u­lar­ly lengthy and cost­ly cap­i­tal case has changed how he will make deci­sions in future cas­es that are eligible…

For the third time in two years, the Delaware Supreme Court has reversed the con­vic­tion of a death row inmate because his tri­al was taint­ed by prosecutorial…

Although Georgia car­ried out 5 of the 28 exe­cu­tions in the U.S. in 2015, it imposed no new death sen­tences and a sig­nif­i­cant­ly changed legal land­scape points to a ​“new Georgia” with the death penal­ty in decline. The Georgia legal pub­li­ca­tion, Daily Report, dubbed the decline in death sen­tences its ​“news­mak­er of the year,” and explored the rea­sons for the…

In a unan­i­mous deci­sion issued December 21, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld Gov. Tom Wolf’s (pic­tured) impo­si­tion of a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions while he awaits the results of a leg­isla­tive com­mis­sion’s report on Pennsylvania’s death penal­ty. On February 13, 2015, Wolf issued a tem­po­rary reprieve to Terrance Williams and announced that he would put all exe­cu­tions on hold. At that time, he said that Pennsylvania’s ​“cap­i­tal punishment…

The North Carolina Supreme Court has reversed the his­toric rul­ings of a Cumberland County, N.C. tri­al court that had over­turned the death sen­tences of four North Carolina death-row pris­on­ers under the state’s Racial Justice Act. Ruling entire­ly on pro­ce­dur­al grounds, the state’s high court expressed no opin­ion on the low­er court’s fact find­ings that North Carolina pros­e­cu­tors had engaged in a decades-long prac­tice of inten­tion­al race dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selec­tion in capital…

Three quar­ters of American exe­cu­tions in 2015 involved cas­es of ​“crip­pling dis­abil­i­ties and uncer­tain guilt,” accord­ing to a report by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard University. Saying that the 2015 exe­cu­tions revealed ​“a bro­ken cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem,” the report found that, “[o]f the 28 peo­ple exe­cut­ed [in 2015], 75% were men­tal­ly impaired or dis­abled, expe­ri­enced extreme child­hood trau­ma or abuse, or were of ques­tion­able guilt.” It said seven…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit has ruled in favor of Kevan Brumfield, uphold­ing the deci­sion of a Louisiana fed­er­al dis­trict court that he is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and there­fore inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion. Louisiana’s state courts had ini­tial­ly denied Brumfield resources to inves­ti­gate evi­dence of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and then dis­missed his case with­out an evi­den­tiary hear­ing, find­ing that he had not pre­sent­ed suf­fi­cient evi­dence to…

On December 16, DPIC released its annu­al report on the lat­est devel­op­ments in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, ​“The Death Penalty in 2015: Year End Report.” The death penal­ty declined by vir­tu­al­ly every mea­sure in 2015. 28 peo­ple were exe­cut­ed, the fewest since 1991. Death sen­tences dropped 33% from last year’s his­toric low, with 49 peo­ple being sen­tenced to death this year. There have now been few­er death sen­tences imposed in the last decade than in the decade before the U.S. Supreme…

Arizona offi­cials have agreed not to sched­ule any exe­cu­tions until a fed­er­al court chal­lenge to the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col and secre­cy pol­i­cy is resolved. U.S. District Court Judge Neil V. Wake had pre­vi­ous­ly put the law­suit on hold while Arizona rewrote its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. He said the exe­cu­tion hold was nec­es­sary to pre­vent what he called ​“cri­sis lit­i­ga­tion” — arti­fi­cial­ly forc­ing the court to decide issues in the 60 days before an exe­cu­tion was sched­uled to…