Publications & Testimony

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…

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 clemen­cy: what it is, who holds the pow­er, and how often it changes the out­come of a cap­i­tal case. Why it mat­ters: The U.S. Supreme Court has described clemen­cy as the​“fail safe” of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, the last rem­e­dy for a wrongful…

A spokesper­son for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment will not seek a death sen­tence for Vance Boelter, the man accused of killing Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her hus­band, Mark Hortman. Mr. Boelter is charged with their mur­ders and stalk­ing, but DOJ said that stalk­ing like­ly would not meet the def­i­n­i­tion of a​“crime of vio­lence,” which would be nec­es­sary to secure a fed­er­al death sen­tence. Mr. Boelter also…

On May 28, 2026, an Alabama fed­er­al dis­trict judge ruled that nitro­gen gas exe­cu­tions are con­sti­tu­tion­al and do not vio­late the Eighth Amendment’s pro­tec­tion against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. In the first fed­er­al bench tri­al exam­in­ing nitro­gen gas as a method of exe­cu­tion, U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks found that death-sen­­tenced pris­on­er Jeffery Lee​“failed to prove that [Alabama’s gas] Protocol caus­es more than​‘the nec­es­sary suffering involved…