Publications & Testimony

On May 1, 2023, the state of Florida adopt­ed leg­is­la­tion allow­ing the death penal­ty for sex­u­al abuse of a child where no death occurred. This statute is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al under the U.S. Supreme Court’s rul­ing in Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008). Excerpts from that opin­ion and from an ami­cus brief cited by…

A recent arti­cle in the The Guardian described the reac­tions of some of the California pris­on­ers who have been moved from San Quentin’s death row and trans­ferred to oth­er facil­i­ties around the state. The pris­on­ers are still under a sen­tence of death, but in 2019 Governor Gavin Newsom declared a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions and has dis­man­tled the execution…

In a detailed five-part series titled​“Poorly exe­cut­ed: How Arizona has failed at car­ry­ing out the death penal­ty,” the Arizona Mirror explores the last 16 years of Arizona’s use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The series focus­es on con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing the exe­cu­tions them­selves, includ­ing changes to the drug pro­to­col, the use of inex­pe­ri­enced or unqual­i­fied per­son­nel, and the state secre­cy sur­round­ing the process. It also looks into oth­er major issues in…

Bills to alter the state’s method of exe­cu­tion and to make the exe­cu­tion process more trans­par­ent failed in Tennessee’s leg­is­la­ture this year as its ses­sion con­clud­ed. In an effort to facil­i­tate exe­cu­tions bogged down by the state’s prob­lems with lethal injec­tion, a bill was pro­posed to give pris­on­ers the option of the fir­ing squad for their exe­cu­tion. Following an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into Tennessee’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­cols, Governor Bill Lee (R) had…

The accom­pa­ny­ing graph (click to view sep­a­rate­ly) dis­plays the time in years since the last exe­cu­tion by each state as of May…

Bills to hide the iden­ti­ties of lethal-injec­­tion drug sup­pli­ers and exe­cu­tion team mem­bers from the pub­lic have passed both cham­bers of the South Carolina leg­is­la­ture. The bills face a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process before one can move to the governor’s desk for sig­na­ture. Proponents of the law say it is nec­es­sary because reveal­ing such infor­ma­tion might make exe­cu­tions dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble. South Carolina has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in 12 years. Opponents…

In the lat­est episode of Discussions with DPIC, Anne Holsinger, Managing Director of DPIC, inter­views Ron McAndrew (pic­tured), a for­mer Florida Prison Warden who wit­nessed exe­cu­tions using elec­tro­cu­tion and lethal injec­tion in Florida and Texas. He offers reflec­tions on the neg­a­tive impact that exe­cu­tions have on the fam­i­lies of both the vic­tim and the con­demned, the correctional officers,…

The board of Cleveland​.com and The Plain Dealer pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al sup­port­ing the pas­sage of Senate Bill 101 that would abol­ish the death penal­ty in Ohio. “[T]he time is right,” states the piece,​“for the General Assembly to come togeth­er to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Ohio. Its inequities are man­i­fest, its bar­barism is clear — and its…

A forth­com­ing arti­cle in the Denver Law Review dis­cuss­es two the­o­ries of homi­cide law, the felony mur­der rule and accom­plice lia­bil­i­ty, that cre­ate group lia­bil­i­ty for the actions of an indi­vid­ual. The arti­cle, writ­ten by Professors G. Ben Cohen (pic­tured), Justin D. Levinson, and Koichi Hioki states that​“Research sug­gests that the admin­is­tra­tion of accom­plice lia­bil­i­ty [and] felony mur­der doc­trines dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact Black and minority…

On April 21, 2023, Governor Jay Inslee signed leg­is­la­tion remov­ing the death penal­ty from the state’s laws. With that action, all three branch­es of the state’s gov­ern­ment have tak­en steps to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Washington: Gov. Inslee had declared a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in 2014, the state Supreme Court found the statute uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in 2018, and the leg­is­la­ture has now strick­en it from the…