Publications & Testimony

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. This installment looks at junk science: how flawed or overstated forensic evidence has contributed to wrongful capital convictions, and what happens when the understanding of evidence underlying a conviction changes. Why this Matters: Forensic evidence is often presented to juries as objective scientific…

The cases of eight men executed between 1986 and 1998 will be part of a Virginia State Crime Commission review into the practices of Mary Jane Burton, a forensic scientist who allegedly mishandled DNA evidence and gave inaccurate testimony in court. The cases are among more than 7,000 cases linked to Ms. Burton that are being assessed after journalist Tessa Kramer uncovered concerns about Ms. Burton’s methods. Ms. Kramer’s podcast, Admissible: Shreds of Evidence, brought those concerns to…

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: More than 100 citizens of other countries are under sentences of death in the United States, and in nearly every reported case, arresting authorities failed to promptly inform them of their treaty right to consular assistance. Article 36 of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations…

In a letter issued ahead of the execution of James Duckett and Dominick Occhicone on July 28, 2026, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops “wish[ed] to remind Catholics of the teaching of our Church against the use of the death penalty in situations — like our own — where bloodless means are sufficient to punish offenders and protect public safety.” Noting “Florida’s alarming rate of executions” and the state’s efforts to expand the death penalty’s scope, the Conference writes to “invite a…

On July 30, 2026, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey set a new execution date for Jeffery Lee after the state’s unsuccessful attempt to execute him using nitrogen gas in June. Gov. Ivey set Mr. Lee’s execution by lethal injection for September 17, 2026, just over three months after an Alabama federal judge permanently blocked the state from using its nitrogen gas protocol. This new execution date came after U.S. District Judge Emily Marks, the same judge who enjoined the state from using nitrogen gas…

Missouri has carried out executions at one of the highest rates of any state since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume 50 years ago, according to a new analysis of death sentences issued between 1972 and 2025. The Marshall Project, drawing on data compiled by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Professor Frank Baumgartner and the Death Penalty Information Center, found that Missouri has executed more than half of the people it has sentenced to death. Nationally…

Why it matters: State laws permitting judges to override jury decisions and the imposition of death sentences based on non-unanimous jury verdicts have contributed to Alabama and Florida’s high death sentencing rates — with nearly 20% of Alabama’s death-sentenced population on death row because of judicial override. Between 1976 and 2017, elected Alabama judges overrode jury sentencing decisions 112 times. In 91% of those cases, judges overruled jury decisions of life to impose death sentences.

In a July 17, 2026, op-ed, former Barack Obama advisor Van Jones and former George W. Bush appointee David Safavian jointly argue that courts continue to accept discredited forensic techniques as reliable evidence, contributing to wrongful convictions across the country. The authors contrast the confident forensic experts seen on television crime dramas with real-world courtrooms where they say, “phony forensics” methods — microscopic hair comparison, bite mark analysis, and blood-stain pattern…