Publications & Testimony

On July 14, 2026, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced the resched­ul­ing of James Duckett’s exe­cu­tion for July 28 — the same day the state is set to car­ry out the exe­cu­tion of Dominick Occhicone. If both exe­cu­tions go for­ward, it would be the first time in the mod­ern era of the death penal­ty that Florida has car­ried out two exe­cu­tions in one day, and make Mr. Occhicone the old­est per­son exe­cut­ed in Florida’s mod­ern his­to­ry, break­ing the record set by Dennis Sochor’s…

DPI’s​“What to Know” series exam­ines cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from mul­ti­ple angles, one top­ic at a time. Each install­ment pro­vides essen­tial facts and data on spe­cif­ic aspects of the death penal­ty. Why it mat­ters: The death penal­ty is an irre­versible pun­ish­ment, and the United States has con­vict­ed, con­demned, and in some cas­es exe­cut­ed peo­ple despite cred­i­ble evi­dence of their inno­cence. — 202 peo­ple have been exon­er­at­ed from death row since 1973, across 30…

In a July 8, 2026 op-ed pub­lished in the Kansas Reflector, Celeste Dixon, a retired U.S. Navy reservist and National Park Service employ­ee who lives in Pawnee County, Kansas, calls on Governor Laura Kelly to com­mute the sen­tences of the nine men on Kansas’ death row to life with­out parole. Writing from per­son­al expe­ri­ence, Ms. Dixon notes that near­ly 40 years ago, her moth­er, Marguerite, was mur­dered in Texas; almost 19 years ago, the indi­vid­ual who killed her mother was…

On July 8, 2026, King Charles, fol­low­ing the advice of Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, grant­ed a posthu­mous con­di­tion­al par­don to Ruth Ellis, con­vert­ing her death sen­tence to a term of life impris­on­ment. Ms. Ellis was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death for the April 10, 1955 mur­der of her roman­tic part­ner David Blakely, and she was the last woman hanged in the United Kingdom on July 13, 1955. A press release from the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice explains that this…

On July 7, 2026, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee told mem­bers of the media that the state’s sched­uled exe­cu­tions will pro­ceed with­out any changes to the lethal injec­tion pro­to­col, despite the state’s failed attempt to exe­cute Tony Carruthers in May. Gov. Lee stat­ed that the exe­cu­tion team fol­lowed the prop­er pro­to­col dur­ing the attempt­ed exe­cu­tion and that the prob­lem was with locat­ing a suit­able vein for an IV line, rather than with the pro­to­col itself.​“I think, as we…

A June 30 arti­cle by Pamela Colloff, co-pub­­lished in ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, inves­ti­gates Florida’s record-set­t­ing pace of exe­cu­tions over the past 18 months, even as the rest of the coun­try large­ly​“aban­dons” the death penal­ty. Ms. Colloff uses data from the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) to empha­size Florida’s out­lier sta­tus, while explor­ing the polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions of the exe­cu­tion spree and its impact on the peo­ple involved. As DPI…

Introduction False state­ments by gov­ern­ment offi­cials. Media wit­ness­es banned from view­ing exe­cu­tions. New laws passed to evade judi­cial review. During the first six months of 2026, the Death Penalty Information Center doc­u­ment­ed new efforts to con­ceal crit­i­cal details about the death penal­ty — even as some gov­ern­ment offi­cials sought to increase and expand its use. These efforts are best under­stood when the truth about the death penal­ty and exe­cu­tions is viewed…

In the July 2026 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI’s Executive Director Robin M. Maher speaks with Samuel Spital, Associate Director Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF). To mark the 50^th anniver­sary of the Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Gregg v. Georgia, they explore the his­to­ry of the land­mark case, the piv­otal role played by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the lit­i­ga­tion, and the endur­ing lega­cy of leg­endary LDF attor­ney Anthony Amsterdam. They…