Publications & Testimony

A new study pub­lished in the Washington Law Review address­es the racial and geo­graph­i­cal dis­par­i­ties in the imple­men­ta­tion of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. The study, con­duct­ed by G. Ben Cohen, Counsel for the Capital Appeals Project in New Orleans, and Robert J. Smith, Counsel for the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, con­cludes that the dis­par­i­ties in the fed­er­al death penal­ty may exist because…

According to the lat­est fig­ures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Hispanics rep­re­sent a larg­er pro­por­tion of those on death row than in the past. Hispanics con­sti­tut­ed almost 20% of the new admis­sions to death row in 2009 (18 new inmates). Half of the new Hispanic death row inmates were from California, bring­ing their total to 157 Hispanic inmates, the most in the coun­try. Hispanics now rep­re­sent 13.5% of the U.S. death row population.

On February 11, 2011, a sym­po­sium will be held at the Vermont Law School in South Royalton to explore cur­rent issues in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Entitled New Perspectives on Capital Punishment, the sym­po­sium will address the death penal­ty from the point of view of schol­ars, lit­i­ga­tors, and edu­ca­tors. The goal of the sym­po­sium is to con­tribute to the vital dis­course con­cern­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and its…

On December 22, attor­neys for John Green filed a brief with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ask­ing that a pre-tri­al hear­ing con­cern­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s death penal­ty be allowed to con­tin­ue. An ami­cus brief in sup­port of con­tin­u­ing the hear­ing was also filed by for­mer gov­er­nors, leg­is­la­tors, for­mer judges and pros­e­cu­tors, vic­tim fam­i­ly mem­bers and freed death row inmates, all of whom…

On December 21, the Death Penalty Information Center released its latest report, ​“The Death Penalty in 2010: Year End Report,” on sta­tis­tics and trends in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the past year. The report not­ed there was a 12% decrease in exe­cu­tions in 2010 com­pared to 2009 and a more than 50% drop com­pared to 1999. DPIC pro­ject­ed that the num­ber of new death sen­tences will be 114 for 2010, near last year’s num­ber of 112, which was…

For more than a decade, DPIC has served the media with analy­sis and infor­ma­tion on issues con­cern­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The Center’s reports and press releas­es are wide­ly quot­ed and con­sult­ed by reporters in the United States and around the globe. The fol­low­ing sum­ma­rizes the media response to DPIC’s​“The Death Penalty in 2010: Year End Report,” released December 21, 2010. Coverage appeared in over…

The lat­est edi­tion of the Death Penalty Information Center’s series of pod­casts, DPIC on the Issues, is now avail­able for lis­ten­ing. This pod­cast, Readers’ Choice: Part One, is the first of two episodes that address­es ques­tions sub­mit­ted by read­ers of DPIC’s week­ly e‑newsletter. Generally, this series of pod­casts offers brief, infor­ma­tive dis­cus­sions of key death penal­ty issues. Other recent episodes include discussions on…

More infor­ma­tion has emerged about the wrong­ful con­vic­tion of Anthony Graves (pic­tured), who was exon­er­at­ed from Texas’s death row in 2010. Prosecutor Kelly Siegler, who had tried many cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es and sent 19 peo­ple to death row as a Harris County assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney, and Otto Hanak, a state troop­er and Texas Ranger for 28 years, were brought into the case after an appeals court found that the original…

On January 18, 2011, sev­en reli­gious lead­ers from Texas will hold a ground­break­ing pan­el dis­cus­sion in Houston address­ing faith-based views on the death penal­ty. The pan­el will be mod­er­at­ed by Sister Helen Prejean (pic­tured), author of Dead Man Walking, and Vicki Schieber of Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights. The free pre­sen­ta­tion will include lead­ers from a diver­si­ty of faiths and denom­i­na­tions, includ­ing: Cardinal…

On December 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reject­ed a claim by Oklahoma death row inmate Jeffrey Matthews that the use of the drug pen­to­bar­bi­tal could result in a cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. The Court unan­i­mous­ly con­clud­ed that the amount of pen­to­bar­bi­tal author­i­ties plan to use, as the first in a three-drug pro­ce­dure, would like­ly be lethal by itself. The deci­sion also allows…