Publications & Testimony

As leg­isla­tive ses­sions begin across the coun­try, leg­is­la­tors in sev­er­al states have pro­posed bills to abol­ish or reform the death penal­ty in 2013. In Alabama, Sen. Hank Sanders will intro­duce bills to abol­ish the death penal­ty, or alter­na­tive­ly to insti­tute a series of reforms. ​“I believe the death penal­ty is not only unpro­duc­tive but counter-pro­duc­tive,” he said. Texas will also con­sid­er a num­ber of death penal­ty reform bills, includ­ing restrictions on…

DPIC’s 2012 Year End Report received exten­sive media cov­er­age in the U.S. and inter­na­tion­al­ly. Coverage includ­ed pieces by the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, Reuters, New York Times, CNN, and hun­dreds of oth­er out­lets. National broad­cast out­lets such as NPR, MSNBC, and CBS Radio also ran pieces. Many papers edi­to­ri­al­ized about the…

Following the themes of DPIC’s 2012 Year End Report, the lead edi­to­r­i­al for Jan. 2 in the New York Times con­clud­ed that ​“cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is cru­el and unusu­al” as judged by the coun­try’s ​“evolv­ing stan­dards” of decen­cy and ​“should be abol­ished” by the Supreme Court. The Times​’s edi­to­r­i­al not­ed the few­er num­ber of states car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions, the lack of any mean­ing­ful ratio­nale, the arbi­trari­ness of its appli­ca­tion, and…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund​’s Death Row USA showed a decrease of 43 inmates under sen­tence of death from January 1 to October 1, 2012. Over the last decade, the total pop­u­la­tion of state and fed­er­al death rows has decreased sig­nif­i­cant­ly, from 3,703 inmates in 2000 to 3,146 inmates as of October 2012. California con­tin­ues to have the largest death row pop­u­la­tion (724), fol­lowed by Florida (411), Texas (304), Pennsylvania (204),…