Publications & Testimony

Idaho will become the fifth state to autho­rize the fir­ing squad as a method of exe­cu­tion and may become the first state to manda­to­ri­ly impose it on a death row pris­on­er since 1976. Idaho’s Governor Brad Little signed HB 186 into law on March 24, 2023, and it goes into effect on July 1. The law gives the direc­tor of the Idaho Department of Correction up to five days after a death war­rant is issued to deter­mine if lethal injec­tion is avail­able. If it is declared unavail­able, the…

According to the Louisiana Public Defender’s Office, the state spent $7.7 mil­lion on the legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of defen­dants in death penal­ty cas­es just in 2022. That total does not include the costs of pros­e­cu­tors, judges, and oth­er crim­i­nal jus­tice per­son­nel. The state has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in 13 years and has had only one exe­cu­tion in the past 21 years. State offi­cials have attrib­uted the most recent exe­cu­tion delays to dif­fi­cul­ties obtaining the…

An in-depth piece in the Huffington Post exam­ines Harris County’s (Texas) sys­tem for pro­vid­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion to those fac­ing the death penal­ty who can­not afford their own attor­ney. The process is explored through the sto­ry of Obel Cruz-Garcia, a prisoner on…

In the lat­est episode of​“Discussions with DPIC,” Robert Dunham, for­mer Executive Director of DPIC, inter­views Karen Steele (pic­tured), a researcher and defense attor­ney in Oregon, regard­ing the spe­cial char­ac­ter­is­tics of late ado­les­cent defen­dants fac­ing the death penal­ty. Research by Steele and oth­ers points to the incom­plete brain devel­op­ment in those aged 18 – 21 and how that can be exac­er­bat­ed in those suf­fer­ing from fetal alco­hol spec­trum dis­or­der. The…

On March 14, 2023, at the direc­tion of Attorney General Merrick Garland (pic­tured), the U.S. Attorney for the District of North Dakota with­drew the notice of intent to seek a death sen­tence for Alfonso Rodriguez, Jr., who had been con­vict­ed in 2006 of the 2003 kid­nap­ping and killing of col­lege stu­dent Dru Sjodin. Rodriguez had orig­i­nal­ly been sen­tenced to death in 2007, but U.S. District Court Judge Ralph Erickson reversed the death sen­tence because of misleading testimony…

Death-sen­­tenced pris­on­ers in California will be moved out of San Quentin State Prison (pic­tured) and placed in oth­er max­i­mum secu­ri­ty facil­i­ties, as part of a broad plan announced by Governor Gavin Newsom on March 17, 2023. The gov­er­nor seeks to​“trans­form” the state’s old­est prison into​“a one-of-a-kind facil­i­ty focused on improv­ing pub­lic safe­ty through reha­bil­i­ta­tion and edu­ca­tion.” The state launched a pilot pro­gram in 2020 allow­ing some death-row prisoners…

On March 13, 2023 in Japan, Tokyo’s High Court grant­ed a retri­al for Iwao Hakamada, a for­mer box­er known as the​“longest serv­ing death row” pris­on­er in the world. He was con­vict­ed of mur­der in 1968. Hideaki Nakagawa, Director of Amnesty International Japan, described the rul­ing as a​“long-over­­due chance to deliver some…

In an op-ed for the National Review, psy­chi­a­trist Sally Satel writes,​“No civ­i­lized or law­ful pur­pose is served by exe­cut­ing the severe­ly men­tal­ly ill.” Satel is a senior fel­low at the American Enterprise Institute, and she high­lights the deficits in the cur­rent legal sys­tem that per­mit cap­i­tal sen­tences and exe­cu­tions for those suf­fer­ing from severe men­tal ill­ness.​“The require­ments to qual­i­fy for the insan­i­ty defense set the bar so high that few mentally…

A 2022 arti­cle in the Columbia Journal of Law & Social Problems presents both a his­tor­i­cal overview of the prac­tice of death-row con­fine­ment in the U.S. and the find­ings of a sur­vey of the con­di­tions on death rows in every juris­dic­tion with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in America. Regarding the use of high­ly restric­tive con­fine­ment, the author states that​“the sys­tem of per­ma­nent soli­tary con­fine­ment on death row has nei­ther the weight of his­to­ry nor the…

During the sen­tenc­ing phase of cap­i­tal cas­es, sym­pa­thet­ic evi­dence about the life of the defen­dant is typ­i­cal­ly pre­sent­ed to jurors, who then must decide whether such mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors mer­it spar­ing his or her life. Mitigation spe­cial­ists play a cru­cial role in col­lect­ing such evi­dence. They doc­u­ment​“the trau­mas, pol­i­cy fail­ures, fam­i­ly dynam­ics and indi­vid­ual choic­es that shape the lives of peo­ple who kill.” According to an arti­cle from The…