Publications & Testimony

DPI’s​“What to Know” series exam­ines cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from mul­ti­ple angles, one top­ic at a time. Each install­ment pro­vides essen­tial facts and data on spe­cif­ic aspects of the death penal­ty. This install­ment looks at junk sci­ence: how flawed or over­stat­ed foren­sic evi­dence has con­tributed to wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions, and what hap­pens when the under­stand­ing of evi­dence under­ly­ing a con­vic­tion changes. Why this Matters: Forensic evidence is…

The cas­es of eight men exe­cut­ed between 1986 and 1998 will be part of a Virginia State Crime Commission review into the prac­tices of Mary Jane Burton, a foren­sic sci­en­tist who alleged­ly mis­han­dled DNA evi­dence and gave inac­cu­rate tes­ti­mo­ny in court. The cas­es are among more than 7,000 cas­es linked to Ms. Burton that are being assessed after jour­nal­ist Tessa Kramer uncov­ered con­cerns about Ms. Burton’s meth­ods. Ms. Kramer’s pod­cast, Admissible: Shreds of Evidence,…

DPI’s​“What to Know” series exam­ines cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from mul­ti­ple angles, one top­ic at a time. Each install­ment pro­vides essen­tial facts and data on spe­cif­ic aspects of the death penal­ty. Why it mat­ters: More than 100 cit­i­zens of oth­er coun­tries are under sen­tences of death in the United States, and in near­ly every report­ed case, arrest­ing author­i­ties failed to prompt­ly inform them of their treaty right to con­sular assis­tance. — Article 36 of the 1963…

On July 23, 2026, Delaware Superior Court Judge Calvin Scott ordered a Certificate of Innocence be issued to Jermaine​“Marlow” Wright (pic­tured, right, with attor­ney James Moreno) and grant­ed expunge­ment of his con­vic­tion. Mr. Wright is the 203^rd per­son exon­er­at­ed from death row in the United States since 1973, and the sec­ond in Delaware. Mr. Wright was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1992 for a liquor store rob­bery and mur­der of the clerk, Phillip Seifert. No…

In a let­ter issued ahead of the exe­cu­tion of James Duckett and Dominick Occhicone on July 28, 2026, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops​“wish[ed] to remind Catholics of the teach­ing of our Church against the use of the death penal­ty in sit­u­a­tions — like our own — where blood­less means are suf­fi­cient to pun­ish offend­ers and pro­tect pub­lic safe­ty.” Noting​“Florida’s alarm­ing rate of exe­cu­tions” and the state’s efforts to expand the death penalty’s scope, the…

On July 30, 2026, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey set a new exe­cu­tion date for Jeffery Lee after the state’s unsuc­cess­ful attempt to exe­cute him using nitro­gen gas in June. Gov. Ivey set Mr. Lee’s exe­cu­tion by lethal injec­tion for September 17, 2026, just over three months after an Alabama fed­er­al judge per­ma­nent­ly blocked the state from using its nitro­gen gas pro­to­col. This new exe­cu­tion date came after U.S. District Judge Emily Marks, the same judge who enjoined the state from…

Missouri has car­ried out exe­cu­tions at one of the high­est rates of any state since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to resume 50 years ago, accord­ing to a new analy­sis of death sen­tences issued between 1972 and 2025. The Marshall Project, draw­ing on data com­piled by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Professor Frank Baumgartner and the Death Penalty Information Center, found that Missouri has exe­cut­ed more than half of the peo­ple it has sentenced…

#### DPI’s​“What to Know” series exam­ines cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from mul­ti­ple angles, one top­ic at a time. Each install­ment pro­vides essen­tial facts and data on spe­cif­ic aspects of the death penal­ty. Why it mat­ters: State laws per­mit­ting judges to over­ride jury deci­sions and the impo­si­tion of death sen­tences based on non-unan­i­­mous jury ver­dicts have con­tributed to Alabama and Florida’s high death sen­tenc­ing rates — with near­ly 20% of Alabama’s death-sentenced population…

In a July 17, 2026, op-ed, for­mer Barack Obama advi­sor Van Jones and for­mer George W. Bush appointee David Safavian joint­ly argue that courts con­tin­ue to accept dis­cred­it­ed foren­sic tech­niques as reli­able evi­dence, con­tribut­ing to wrong­ful con­vic­tions across the coun­try. The authors con­trast the con­fi­dent foren­sic experts seen on tele­vi­sion crime dra­mas with real-world court­rooms where they say,​“pho­ny foren­sics” meth­ods — micro­scop­ic hair com­par­i­son, bite…