Publications & Testimony

On June 18, 2026, The Marshall Project released​“The Last 12 Weeks,” a pod­cast series detail­ing the weeks lead­ing up to David Wood’s 2025 exe­cu­tion date in Texas. The series fol­lows Mr. Wood’s defense team as they re-inves­ti­­gate his case and iden­ti­fy evi­dence over­looked by state pros­e­cu­tors at tri­al. Hosted and report­ed by Maurice Chammah from The Marshall Project and Alvin Melathe from Serial Productions, the series gives a dynam­ic account of the usually private…

On June 21, 2026, Jordan per­formed its first exe­cu­tions since March 2017, hang­ing six men con­vict­ed of ter­ror­ism-relat­ed or drug-traf­­fick­­ing charges on a sin­gle day, all accused of direct­ly or indi­rect­ly caus­ing the deaths of law enforce­ment or secu­ri­ty forces. On the same day the exe­cu­tions were car­ried out, Prime Minister Jafar Hassan announced dur­ing a cab­i­net ses­sion that Parliament intends to expand cap­i­tal crimes to include​“major drug traffickers and…

An in-depth analy­sis pub­lished by The Marshall Project, in part­ner­ship with The Guardian, finds that 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s land­mark deci­sion in Gregg v. Georgia, the American death penal­ty has failed to deliv­er on the mea­sures its archi­tects out­lined. Drawing on data gath­ered by University of North Carolina pro­fes­sor Frank Baumgartner and the Death Penalty Information Center, the study exam­ined more than 9,000 death sen­tences imposed since states redrafted…

For the past 15 years, as state after state has passed exe­cu­tion secre­cy laws, the pub­lic has faced more ques­tions than answers about how elect­ed offi­cials use their tax­pay­er dol­lars for the most seri­ous pun­ish­ment. Every active death penal­ty state now has a law shield­ing key infor­ma­tion about exe­cu­tions, such as the source of lethal injec­tion drugs, the iden­ti­ties of exe­cu­tion team mem­bers, and whether those indi­vid­u­als have ade­quate train­ing. In 2026, as…

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (pic­tured), a Republican, said on June 16, 2026 that he now believes Ohio should abol­ish the death penal­ty. Gov. DeWine helped to write the state’s death penal­ty law while serv­ing as a state leg­is­la­tor in 1981, but has halt­ed exe­cu­tions dur­ing his time as gov­er­nor, cit­ing con­cerns about the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. In a state­ment, Gov. DeWine described his 50 years of reflec­tion about the death penal­ty, begin­ning with his positions…

The per­cent­age of Americans who find the death penal­ty moral­ly unac­cept­able has risen to 39%, while the per­cent­age who find it accept­able has fall­en to a record low, accord­ing to a new poll released by Gallup on June 9, 2026. A slight major­i­ty (52%) of respon­dents to Gallup’s annu­al Values and Beliefs poll said that they still con­sid­er the death penal­ty moral­ly accept­able, down from the pre­vi­ous record-low of 54% in the organization’s 2020 sur­vey. Support has fallen…

On June 1, 2026, the California Supreme Court reversed the death sen­tence of Anthony Bankston under the retroac­tive appli­ca­tion of the California Racial Justice Act (CRJA) – the first cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment rever­sal under this Act in California’s his­to­ry. The opin­ion asserts: > ​“In light of the pas­sage of the RJA, we now make clear that, what­ev­er the intent behind telling the sto­ry may be, the Bengal tiger sto­ry should no longer be told in California court­rooms. We have…

According to Amnesty International’s annu­al death penal­ty report, 17 coun­tries car­ried out a total of at least 2,707 exe­cu­tions in 2025. Although the low num­ber of exe­cut­ing coun­tries was con­sis­tent with the annu­al total of 20 exe­cut­ing coun­tries or few­er since 2018, the num­ber of exe­cu­tions marked the high­est glob­al total since 1981. The 78% increase in known exe­cu­tions from 2024 to 2025 was pri­mar­i­ly dri­ven by Iran, which account­ed for 80% of the global total…

\Update 9:17pm ET, June 11, 2026: [The U.S. Supreme Court denied Alabama’s appeal. Mr. Lee’s exe­cu­tion will not pro­ceed as sched­uled.] On June 9, 2026, an Alabama fed­er­al dis­trict judge​“per­ma­nent­ly enjoined” state offi­cials from using nitro­gen gas to exe­cute death-sen­­tenced pris­on­er Jeffery Lee after find­ing that the state’s nitro­gen exe­cu­tion pro­to­col vio­lates the Eighth Amendment’s pro­hi­bi­tion on cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. Judge Emily Marks issued her…