Publications & Testimony

The New York Times reports that the num­ber of coun­tries using cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment con­tin­ued to shrink and its use became more iso­lat­ed from 2013 to 2014, even as the num­ber of death sen­tences world­wide rose. 105 coun­tries have abol­ished the death penal­ty, most recent­ly Suriname and Mongolia, and the United Nations lists 60 addi­tion­al coun­tries as​“de fac­to abo­li­tion­ist” because they have not had any exe­cu­tions in at least 10 years. That leaves just 28…

A new report by a spe­cial com­mit­tee cre­at­ed by Orange County, California District Attorney Tony Rackauckas (pic­tured) cites a​“fail­ure of lead­er­ship” as the root cause of a mul­ti-decade his­to­ry of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct involv­ing jail­house infor­mants. Documents obtained by defense lawyers and The Orange County Register had revealed what the paper called​“a secret and well-orga­nized net­work of snitch­es” that had been hid­den from defense…

Natrona County, Wyoming District Attorney Mike Blonigen (pic­tured) recent­ly called for a recon­sid­er­a­tion of the state’s death penal­ty after a fed­er­al judge over­turned the death sen­tence of Dale Wayne Eaton, a decade after Blonigen obtained it in 2004. At the time U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson reversed Eaton’s sen­tence in 2014, Eaton was the only per­son on Wyoming’s…

Several news­pa­pers across the coun­try fea­tured themes from DPIC’s 2015 Year End Report in edi­to­ri­als and opin­ion pieces at the…

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Velma Barfield in North Carolina on November 2, 1984 — She was in a rela­tion­ship with Stuart Taylor who was a wid­ow­er. She forged checks on Taylor’s account to pay for her addic­tion. Fearing that she had been found out, she mixed an arsenic based rat poi­son into his beer and tea. Taylor became very ill. As his con­di­tion wors­ened, she took him to the hos­pi­tal where he died a few days lat­er. There was an autop­sy which found that the cause of Taylor’s death was…

(source: M. Watt Espy and John Ortiz Smylka,​“Executions in the U.S. 1608 – 1987: The Espy File.” (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, 1994) with recent…

Per Capita State Execution Rates — — — — — — — — — — — - *Death penal­ty abol­ished. Population based on 2024 US Census Estimate Data. Executions: Total since resump­tion of the death penal­ty in the U.S. in 1972 after the U.S. Supreme Court declared exist­ing statutes uncon­sti­tu­tion­al through 2024. Executions per Death Sentence — — — — — — — — — – Executions based on DPI Execution Database. Death Sentences from Bureau of Justice Statistics, Capital Punishment…

Donnis MusgroveAlabama: Conviction, 1988; Died on Death Row, 2015David RogersAlabama: Conviction, 1988; Died on Death…

In 1997, a St. Louis County, Missouri jury unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to sen­tence David Barnett to death. Eighteen years lat­er, after learn­ing hor­rif­ic details of the phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse to which Barnett had been sub­ject­ed as a small child, Andrew Dazey — the jury fore­man in Barnett’s tri­al — says “[t]here’s no way” he would have vot­ed for death. At tri­al, Barnett’s lawyer pre­sent­ed some evi­dence of his clien­t’s abuse, men­tal ill­ness, and suicide…