Publications & Testimony

To com­mem­o­rate the 20^th anniver­sary of the United States Supreme Court deci­sion that end­ed the juve­nile death penal­ty, DPI will release a report exam­in­ing the lega­cy of this deci­sion and its impli­ca­tions for emerg­ing adults. This arti­cle exam­ines one area of focus in the report: recent state courts deci­sions that have extend­ed legal pro­tec­tions to emerg­ing adults ages 18 to 20. In 2012, in Miller v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court empha­sized that​“youth matters”…

Paul​“Greg” House, who spent twen­­ty-two years on Tennessee’s death row before his exon­er­a­tion in 2009, died at the age of 63 on March 25, 2025, from com­pli­ca­tions of pneu­mo­nia fol­low­ing years of liv­ing with mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis. His case was one of the rare cas­es to meet the strin­gent​“actu­al inno­cence” excep­tion to habeas rules that today pre­vent many oth­er peti­tion­ers from even pre­sent­ing their claims of inno­cence in court. Mr. House was sen­tenced to death in…

On April 1, 2025, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced she has direct­ed act­ing U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, Matthew Podolsky, to seek the death penal­ty against Luigi Mangione for the 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. This is the first time AG Bondi has direct­ed pros­e­cu­tors to seek the death penal­ty since President Donald Trump assumed office in January 2025, when he issued an exec­u­tive order includ­ing a call to​“restore” the fed­er­al death penal­ty. In a…

Update: On May 13, 2025, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed HB 123 into law, which goes into effect immediately. On March 31, 2025, the Georgia Senate, in a 53 – 1 vote, passed HB 123, send­ing the bill to Governor Brian Kemp’s desk to be signed. HB 123 pro­vides pre­tri­al hear­ings for cap­i­tal defen­dants to raise intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty claims and would low­er the stan­dard of proof for those claims from​“beyond a rea­son­able doubt” to a​“pre­pon­der­ance of evi­dence,” in…

This month marks the 20^th anniver­sary of the land­mark U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion in Roper v. Simmons. In a series of posts antic­i­pat­ing the April 2025 release of DPI’s report com­mem­o­rat­ing the 20^th Anniversary of the Roper deci­sion and its impli­ca­tions for emerg­ing adults , we are explor­ing sci­en­tif­ic and legal devel­op­ments relat­ed to juve­niles and emerg­ing adults in the death penal­ty sys­tem. Adverse child­hood expe­ri­ences (ACEs) refer to potentially…

A March 25, 2025, sto­ry in Religion News Service details the spir­i­tu­al jour­ney of Rev. Hillary Taylor, a United Methodist min­is­ter who served as a spir­i­tu­al advis­er to Brad Sigmon, the South Carolina death row pris­on­er exe­cut­ed by fir­ing squad on March 7, 2025. Rev. Taylor, exec­u­tive direc­tor of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, reveals the pro­found human con­nec­tion she devel­oped with Mr. Sigmon, high­light­ing how​“he loved to share with…

As clos­ing argu­ments of his tri­al began in Johnston County, North Carolina, Hasson Bacote watched as Assistant District Attorney Gregory Butler urged the jury to sen­tence him to death. Mr. Bacote, a Black man, had been con­vict­ed of fatal­ly shoot­ing 18-year-old Anthony Surles dur­ing a rob­bery when Mr. Bacote was just 21 years old. Mr. Bacote admit­ted he had fired a sin­gle shot out of a trail­er, but said he did not know that he hit any­one.​“Hasson Bacote is a thug: cold-blooded…