Publications & Testimony

In an op-ed for Newsweek, Stanford Law Professor John Donohue argues that there is​“not the slight­est cred­i­ble sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment reduces the rate of homi­cide” and presents data to show that the death penal­ty is not an effec­tive deter­rent. Comparisons between neigh­bor­ing juris­dic­tions show no effect of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment:​“Whether one com­pares the sim­i­lar move­ments of homi­cide in Canada and the U.S.,…

(UPDATE: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has grant­ed Bernardo Tercero a stay of exe­cu­tion to per­mit him to lit­i­gate evi­dence that a lead pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness tes­ti­fied false­ly against him.) The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), a unit of the Organization of American States, has called on Texas offi­cials to stay the exe­cu­tion of Nicaraguan cit­i­zen Bernardo Tercero (pic­tured), who is…

In the first episode of sea­son 2 of​“Death Row Stories,” CNN exam­ined the case of Ruben Cantu, who was exe­cut­ed in Texas in 1993 despite seri­ous doubts about his guilt. The episode fea­tured an inter­view with Sam Milsap, the District Attorney at the time of Cantu’s tri­al, who assert­ed his belief in Cantu’s inno­cence. Cantu’s co-defen­­dant and a key eye­wit­ness from the case both sup­port­ed Cantu’s claim of inno­cence. The hour-long…

A Food and Drug Administration let­ter to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction indi­cat­ed the state was con­sid­er­ing import­ing sodi­um thiopen­tal from over­seas for use in exe­cu­tions. The let­ter warned the depart­ment that import­ing the drug would vio­late fed­er­al law:​“Please note that there is no FDA approved appli­ca­tion for sodi­um thiopen­tal, and it is ille­gal to import an unap­proved new drug into the United States.” A similar letter…

A recent op-ed by for­mer Texas Governor Mark White (pic­tured) and for­mer Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerald Kogan crit­i­cized a recent­ly passed North Carolina law that impos­es secre­cy on the source of lethal injec­tion drugs and removes exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures from pub­lic review and com­ment. The authors said the new law will only pro­long lit­i­ga­tion, rather than end­ing North Carolina’s hold on exe­cu­tions, as intend­ed. The op-ed also…

A new study of tri­als in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, revealed that poten­tial jurors who were black were much more like­ly to be struck from juries than non-blacks. The results were con­sis­tent with find­ings from Alabama, North Carolina, and oth­er parts of Louisiana, high­light­ing an issue that will be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme…

DPIC’s com­plete set of 50 facts about the death penal­ty is now avail­able. The 50 facts pro­vide an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to a vari­ety of death penal­ty top­ics, includ­ing costs, deter­rence, race, inno­cence, and more. Each fact is pre­sent­ed in graph­i­cal form, with links to fur­ther infor­ma­tion avail­able on our 50 Facts page. The series is also avail­able on Facebook and Twitter, and we…

On August 6, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed a law that removed the require­ment that a physi­cian be present at exe­cu­tions and shroud­ed in secre­cy many ele­ments of the lethal injec­tion process, includ­ing the spe­cif­ic drugs to be used and the sup­pli­ers of those drugs. By elim­i­nat­ing the physi­­cian-par­tic­i­­pa­­tion require­ment, the law attempt­ed to remove a legal hur­dle that has halt­ed exe­cu­tions in North Carolina since 2006. Two major state…

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled on August 13 that the death penal­ty vio­lates the state con­sti­tu­tion. In the 4 – 3 deci­sion in State v. Santiago, the Court said that, because of the prospec­tive repeal of the death penal­ty in 2012 and​“the state’s near total mora­to­ri­um on car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions over the past fifty-five years, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has become incom­pat­i­ble with con­tem­po­rary stan­dards of decency in…

A new film,​“Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man,” pre­mieres on August 13. The movie, described as a​“doc­u­men­tary mem­oir,” tells the sto­ry of Kirk Bloodsworth, an inno­cent man sen­tenced to death in Maryland who became the first death row pris­on­er in the United States to be exon­er­at­ed by DNA evi­dence. Bloodsworth was con­vict­ed and sent to death row in 1985 for the sex­u­al assault and mur­der of a 9‑year-old girl. He won a new tri­al as a result of…