Publications & Testimony

A recent arti­cle in Mother Jones exam­ines lin­ger­ing ques­tions in the deter­mi­na­tion of which inmates are exempt from exe­cu­tion because of mental…

According to a new poll by Public Policy Polling, a major­i­ty of Pennsylvanians find some form of a life sen­tence to be prefer­able to the death penal­ty, and more sup­port the death penal­ty mora­to­ri­um imposed by Governor Tom Wolf than oppose it. When asked what sen­tence they pre­ferred for peo­ple con­vict­ed of mur­der, 54% of respon­dents select­ed some form of life sen­tence, while 42% pre­ferred the death penal­ty. 50% were in favor of the Commonwealth’s death penalty…

UPDATE: After Louisiana denied com­pen­sa­tion to Mr. Ford — who is in hos­pice care, dying from Stage 4 can­cer — Stroud gave an inter­view to the Huffington Post in which he says ​“death penal­ty pros­e­cu­tions are a badge of show­ing how out-of-touch we are with oth­er civ­i­lized soci­eties.… We can’t trust the gov­ern­ment to fix pot­holes. Why should we believe they can design a death penal­ty sys­tem that’s fair?” PREVIOUSLY: In a let­ter to the Shreveport (Louisiana)…

In a let­ter to the President of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty, Pope Francis expressed the Catholic Church’s oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty, call­ing it ​“inad­mis­si­ble, no mat­ter how seri­ous the crime com­mit­ted.” He con­tin­ued, ​“It is an offence against the invi­o­la­bil­i­ty of life and the dig­ni­ty of the human per­son, which con­tra­dicts God’s plan for man and soci­ety, and his mer­ci­ful jus­tice, and impedes the penal­ty from ful­fill­ing any just objec­tive. It…

Mamie Norwood, whose hus­band, Amos, was killed by Pennsylvania death row pris­on­er Terry Williams (pic­tured), recent­ly wrote a let­ter to two state offi­cials ask­ing them to ​“stop try­ing to execute Terry…

UPDATE: On March 23, 2015, Judge Rosa Mroz offi­cial­ly dis­missed the charges against Milke. Milke has been added to DPIC’s exon­er­a­tion list. See Milke’s state­ment on her exon­er­a­tion. PREVIOUSLY: On March 17, the Arizona Supreme Court denied a request by pros­e­cu­tors that it review a low­er court’s order that dis­missed the charges against Debra Milke as a result of ​“egre­gious” police and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and barring her…

A new study from researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill finds that the most like­ly out­come for a cap­i­tal case once a death sen­tence has been imposed is that the defen­dan­t’s con­vic­tion or sen­tence will be reversed on appeal. Execution is only the third most likely…

Legislators in Ohio are seek­ing to enact death penal­ty reforms as the state grap­ples with prob­lems in the appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Sen. Bill Seitz, a Republican, and Sen. Sandra Williams, a Democrat, are work­ing on four bills to address some of the reforms rec­om­mend­ed by the Ohio Supreme Court Death Penalty Task Force last year. The bills would pre­vent the exe­cu­tion of defen­dants with seri­ous men­tal impair­ments, estab­lish a fund for indigent…