Publications & Testimony

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…

On July 20, 2026, attorneys for death-sentenced prisoner Darrell Hines, in a new filing, asked the Tennessee Supreme Court to conditionally stay Mr. Hines’ August 13 execution date because the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) has refused to identify whether it will use the same physician involved in the state’s failed execution attempt of Tony Carruthers. Pointing to an extreme risk of pain and suffering, as evidenced by Mr. Carruthers’ botched execution, counsel for Mr. Hines has…

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 600 capital convictions or death sentences have been overturned or led to exonerations because of prosecutorial misconduct, and researchers say the true scope of the problem is likely far greater. DPI has identified more than 600 instances in which a capital conviction or death…

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. 203 people have been exonerated from death row since 1973, across 30 states. A peer-reviewed…

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 executed. Ms. Dixon…