Publications & Testimony

On July 23, 2014, Arizona’s exe­cu­tion of Joseph Wood was botched, tak­ing near­ly two hours from the time the state began inject­ing him with lethal drugs until he was final­ly pro­nounced dead. Witnesses report­ed that Wood gasped more than 640 times dur­ing the course of the exe­cu­tion, and an offi­cial report lat­er revealed that he was inject­ed with 15 dos­es of the exe­cu­tion drugs. Michael Kiefer, a reporter for the Arizona Republic, who wit­nessed Wood’s exe­cu­tion, described it,…

In a recent arti­cle for the Georgetown Law Journal, Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit calls for sweep­ing reforms in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The for­mer Chief Judge, who was appoint­ed by President Reagan in 1985, out­lined a num­ber of ​“myths” about the legal sys­tem, rais­ing ques­tions about the reli­a­bil­i­ty of eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, fin­ger­print evi­dence, and even DNA evi­dence, which can eas­i­ly be…

According to Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., a Harvard law pro­fes­sor who taught President Obama and the First Lady when they were law stu­dents, the President may be chang­ing his views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Obama has said that he sup­ports exe­cu­tions for ​“espe­cial­ly hor­rif­ic” mur­ders, but has also raised con­cerns about the death penal­ty. Ogletree said that Obama’s recent focus on racial bias in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, as well as declin­ing pub­lic sup­port for the death penalty,…

A new study by Professor Frank Baumgartner of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill finds stark racial and geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in…

According to a study by the Women Donors Network, 95% of elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors in the U.S. are white and 79% are white men. An analy­sis by DPIC of the study’s data fur­ther shows that, in states that have the death penal­ty, 94.5% of elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors are white. In 9 death penal­ty states (Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington, and Wyoming), 100% of elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors are white. These num­bers reveal that there has been lit­tle change…

Two new stud­ies sug­gest that a defen­dan­t’s facial appear­ance pre­dicts whether he is sen­tenced to life or to death, regard­less of actu­al guilt or inno­cence. A study of Florida inmates pub­lished in the July 15 edi­tion of Psychological Science finds that the per­ceived degree of trust­wor­thi­ness of a defen­dan­t’s face pre­dict­ed which of the two sen­tences a defen­dant who has been con­vict­ed of mur­der ulti­mate­ly received. A fol­low-up study also showed that the link between perceived…

Citing a back­lash from his con­tro­ver­sial state­ments about the death penal­ty, Dale Cox (pic­tured), the Interim District Attorney of Caddo Parish, Louisiana, announced on July 14 that he will not run for District Attorney this…

In two sep­a­rate guest columns for The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN), four state leg­is­la­tors urged an end to the death penal­ty in Tennessee. State Representatives Steve McManus (top left) and Mark White (top right), both Republicans, called cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, ​“a lousy return on our invest­ment.” Estimating that Tennessee’s death penal­ty is sim­i­lar in costs to North Carolina’s $11 mil­lion-per-year sys­tem, they list­ed some alter­na­tive uses for death penal­ty funds. ​“270 patrol…

A recent arti­cle in The Economist high­lights con­tin­u­ing long-term inter­na­tion­al trends away from the death penal­ty. Since December, three coun­tries — Fiji, Madagascar, and Suriname — have abol­ished the death penal­ty, increas­ing the num­ber of abo­li­tion­ist coun­tries to above 100. In December, 117 coun­tries vot­ed to sup­port a United Nations res­o­lu­tion for an inter­na­tion­al mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. The arti­cle notes a few out­lier coun­tries, includ­ing the United States and China, in which…

A major­i­ty of Texas death row pris­on­ers who vol­un­tar­i­ly respond­ed to a recent sur­vey by the Texas Observer report­ed hav­ing expe­ri­enced abuse or oth­er trau­ma as chil­dren. The sur­vey results are con­sis­tent with the find­ings of aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies that have repeat­ed­ly doc­u­ment­ed high rates of child­hood abuse among those sen­tenced to death. The Texas Observer sur­vey found that 22 of the 41 death row pris­on­ers who respond­ed (54%)…