Publications & Testimony

In the February 2025 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with three experts on California’s Racial Justice Act (RJA). Natasha Minsker, an attor­ney and con­sul­tant, for­mer­ly of the ACLU, speaks on the his­to­ry of the RJA and the impe­tus for its pas­sage. Genevie Gold, research and writ­ing fel­low at the Office of the State Public Defender (OSPD), describes the process that an RJA claim fol­lows through the legal sys­tem, and…

Robert Roberson with daugh­ter Nikki. Courtesy of the…

In a February blog post, Cato Institute Senior Fellow Jeffrey A. Singer crit­i­cizes the use of med­ical­ized lethal injec­tion, high­light­ing the dou­ble stan­dard under which pro­ce­dures that med­ical pro­fes­sion­als are eth­i­cal­ly barred from car­ry­ing out are not only allowed, but required, of law enforce­ment per­son­nel.​“A doc­tor who inten­tion­al­ly per­forms cru­el and med­ical­ly unjus­ti­fi­able pro­ce­dures that cause pain and suf­fer­ing could face crim­i­nal charges. If…

The recent rul­ing in Hassan Bacote’s Racial Justice Act case in North Carolina has shined a spot­light on a 2012 study on pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al pre­emp­to­ry strikes in North Carolina’s Prosecutorial District 11 that found Black poten­tial jurors were more than twice as like­ly as mem­bers of oth­er races to be struck from juries in cap­i­tal cas­es. The dis­par­i­ties were even greater when specif­i­cal­ly look­ing at Johnston County, one of three coun­ties in District 11: eligible Black…

A new report from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), Unreliable Verdicts: Racial Bias and Wrongful Convictions, explores the his­to­ry of racial bias in jury selec­tion in the United States, includ­ing the last 40 years of racial­­ly-dis­­crim­i­­na­­to­ry pre­emp­to­ry jury strikes, and high­lights the grow­ing body of research show­ing that jury bias is reduced and the delib­er­a­tive process enhanced when juries are more diverse. Looking at the pool of doc­u­ment­ed death penalty…

Alabama State…

Montana State…

For the third con­sec­u­tive ses­sion, the Georgia House of Representatives is review­ing a bill seek­ing to pro­vide bet­ter pro­tec­tions to cap­i­tal defen­dants with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties. Currently, the state requires a defen­dant to prove​“beyond a rea­son­able doubt” that they have an intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty – the only death penal­ty state to have this unusu­al­ly high stan­dard. Introduced by a bipar­ti­san group of leg­is­la­tors on January 27, 2025, HB 123 would…