Publications & Testimony

The American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section has announced its forth­com­ing annu­al report, The State of Criminal Justice 2023, exam­in­ing the state of the American criminal legal…

In the July 2023 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Anne Holsinger, Managing Director of DPIC, speaks with Kirk Bloodsworth (pic­tured), the first per­son exon­er­at­ed from death row by DNA evi­dence. Mr. Bloodsworth reflects on the thir­ty years since his exon­er­a­tion and dis­cuss­es the expe­ri­ence of being wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed. He also describes the work he and oth­er exonerees have done, and how the issue of inno­cence has affect­ed leg­is­la­tion on the death…

A week after Governor Ron DeSantis sched­uled his exe­cu­tion, Florida death-sen­tenced pris­on­er James Barnes (pic­tured) dis­charged his lawyers and waived his appeals. His exe­cu­tion will now pro­ceed on August 3, 2023. Since February 23, 2023, Florida has exe­cut­ed four pris­on­ers. Mr. Barnes will be the fifth pris­on­er exe­cut­ed by Florida this year and the tenth volunteer…

On July 18, 2023, after about nine hours of delib­er­a­tion, a Texas jury sen­tenced for­mer Supervisory United States Border Patrol agent Ronald Anthony Burgos-Aviles, age 34, to life with­out parole (LWOP) instead of death for the 2018 dou­ble mur­der of Grizelda Hernandez, age 27, and their son Dominic Alexander, age 1. This sen­tenc­ing ver­dict occurred in a high-use death penal­ty state; Texas has car­ried out the great­est num­ber of exe­cu­tions, at 583, of any state since 1976. But over the last two…

On July 17, 2023, a Shelby County Criminal Court judge struck down a new statute, passed by the Tennessee Legislature in April 2023, to expand author­i­ty of the appoint­ed state attor­ney gen­er­al in death penal­ty cas­es. Judge Paula Skahan ruled that the law uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly removes the pow­er of the local­ly elect­ed dis­trict attor­ney. Some attor­neys and law­mak­ers who dis­agreed with the new statute ear­li­er expressed con­cerns that the new law tar­get­ed pro­gres­sive dis­trict attor­neys who were…

Two of the nation’s high­est-use death penal­ty states have sched­uled exe­cu­tions for July 20, 2023. Alabama is set to exe­cute James Barber (pic­tured, left), resum­ing exe­cu­tions after Governor Kay Ivey halt­ed them in November 2022 in response to three con­sec­u­tive botched exe­cu­tions. Oklahoma plans to exe­cute Jemaine Cannon (pic­tured, right), one of the 25 peo­ple includ­ed in the two-year exe­cu­tion spree announced in…

Today marks the five-year anniver­sary of Ohio’s last exe­cu­tion, which took place on July 18, 2018. Ohio now joins 15 oth­er states with­out an exe­cu­tion in the past five years. Although there is no for­mal mora­to­ri­um, Governor Mike DeWine has issued sev­er­al reprieves due to con­cerns about the lethal injec­tion pro­to­col and the dif­fi­cul­ty the state has had obtain­ing lethal injec­tion drugs. Ohio has exe­cut­ed 56 peo­ple in the mod­ern death penal­ty era, plac­ing it 8^th over­all in the number of…

Florida’s new death sen­tenc­ing law can­not apply to defen­dants who com­mit­ted their crimes before the law was passed ear­li­er this year, Florida Circuit Judge Kevin Abdoney rules. Florida law pre­vi­ous­ly required that a sen­tenc­ing jury must unan­i­mous­ly vote for death before the court could impose a death sen­tence, but in April of 2023, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law that allows a jury to rec­om­mend a death sen­tence with as few as 8 votes. The rul­ing in Bryan Riley’s case means that the…

The Harris County District Clerk’s Office is attempt­ing to resolve near­ly one-hun­dred crim­i­nal appeals, includ­ing two death penal­ty cas­es, that were over­looked by the court sys­tem for decades. Among them are the appeals of the two death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers, Tony Tyrone Dixon and Syed…

The jury that found Richard Bowers guilty of all 63 fed­er­al charges he faces in con­nec­tion with the 2018 Pittsburgh syn­a­gogue shoot­ing found him eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty on July 13, 2023. Jurors delib­er­at­ed for about two hours before find­ing that the pros­e­cu­tion had met its bur­den by prov­ing that Mr. Bowers had the nec­es­sary intent to com­mit the crime and that the crime had spe­cif­ic aggra­vat­ing fac­tors for eli­gi­bil­i­ty. These fac­tors includ­ed the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of sev­er­al of the victims.