Publications & Testimony

On January 30 U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the gov­ern­ment would seek the death penal­ty in the fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tion of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. DPIC has a num­ber of resources about the fed­er­al death penal­ty, includ­ing a list of fed­er­al death row inmates with descrip­tions of their cas­es, infor­ma­tion about crimes eli­gi­ble for the fed­er­al death penal­ty, a break­down of outcomes in…

DPIC recent­ly added a new web­page con­cern­ing death sen­tences in 2013. This resource includes the name, race, and coun­ty of sen­tenc­ing for each of the 80 defen­dants sen­tenced to death last year, as well as the names of the lead­ing states and coun­ties. The num­ber of new death sen­tences hand­ed down was equal to the sec­ond low­est num­ber since 1976. By race, 40% of those sen­tenced to death were white, 39% were black, 19% were Latino, and 2.5% were of other…

The par­ents of a slain cor­rec­tions offi­cer in Colorado have asked to tes­ti­fy in oppo­si­tion to a death sen­tence for their son’s alleged killer, but pros­e­cu­tors have chal­lenged their right to inter­vene. Eric Autobee​’s (pic­tured) par­ents say that their son​“would not have want­ed some­one killed in his name.” Prosecutors main­tain Colorado law only allows vic­tim impact state­ments to dis­cuss the harm that result­ed from the…

Just one week before the sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Christopher Sepulvado, Louisiana announced it has been unable to find pen­to­bar­bi­tal for its lethal injec­tions and instead may apply a new pro­ce­dure used only once before in the U.S. If the state can­not obtain pen­to­bar­bi­tal, it will employ the two-drug pro­ce­dure used by Ohio on January16 to exe­cute Dennis McGuire, an exe­cu­tion that result­ed in gasp­ing sounds and move­ments by the inmate over…

Attorneys for a Missouri inmate fac­ing immi­nent exe­cu­tion have assert­ed that the Department of Corrections has vio­lat­ed state and fed­er­al laws in acquir­ing its lethal injec­tion drugs. Herbert Smulls is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on January 29, but a chal­lenge has been filed in fed­er­al court alleg­ing that the state’s pen­to­bar­bi­tal was obtained from a com­pound­ing phar­ma­cy in Oklahoma, which is unli­censed in Missouri. The suit also…

New Hampshire, which is con­sid­er­ing a bill to repeal the death penal­ty, only has one inmate on death row – Michael Addison, who was con­vict­ed of killing a police offi­cer. Now that offi­cer’s for­mer part­ner, John Breckenridge (pic­tured), has had a change of heart about the death penal­ty and is call­ing for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Initially, Breckenridge sup­port­ed a death sen­tence for Addison, and even spoke in favor of…

The Death Penalty Information Center’s web­site has been select­ed for inclu­sion in the archives of the U.S. Library of Congress. DPIC’s mate­ri­als will be part of the Library’s his­toric col­lec­tion of Internet resources on pub­lic pol­i­cy top­ics, which will be made avail­able to researchers at Library of Congress facil­i­ties, and may also be avail­able on the Library’s pub­lic access web­site at a lat­er date. The Library’s Web Archiving Team said,…

Bernice King, the youngest daugh­ter of Martin Luther King, Jr., encour­aged New Hampshire to repeal the death penal­ty, say­ing that even though she lost her father and grand­moth­er to mur­der,​“I can’t accept the judg­ment that killers need to be killed, a prac­tice that mere­ly per­pet­u­ates the cycle of vio­lence.” She called the death penal­ty​“unwor­thy of a civ­i­lized soci­ety,” and warned that​“ret­ri­bu­tion can­not light the way to the…

A new poll by the Barna Group found that only 40% of prac­tic­ing Christians sup­port­ed the death penal­ty, and sup­port was even low­er among younger Christians. According to the poll released on January 17, only 23% of prac­tic­ing Christian​“mil­len­ni­als” (i.e., those born between 1980 and 2000) agreed with the state­ment:​“The gov­ern­ment should have the option to exe­cute the worst crim­i­nals.” Without regard to their reg­u­lar prac­tice of their faith, only 42% of Christian baby…

On January 16, Ohio car­ried out the first lethal injec­tion in the U.S. using a new pro­to­col, result­ing in a lengthy and dis­rup­tive exe­cu­tion. Ohio employed a back-up pro­ce­dure to exe­cute Dennis McGuire, using mida­zo­lam, a seda­tive, and hydro­mor­phone, a painkiller. Witnesses to the exe­cu­tion report­ed that McGuire snort­ed, gasped, and strug­gled dur­ing the exe­cu­tion, which took longer than usu­al for death to occur. Deborah Denno,…