Publications & Testimony

Two nation­al polls have found that sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States remains near half-cen­tu­ry lows despite record-high per­cep­tion that local crime has…

The four exe­cu­tions sched­uled for the week of November 17^th high­light cur­rent trends in exe­cu­tions and death sen­tenc­ing and the con­tin­ued use of the death penal­ty against vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions. The pris­on­ers sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed by four states have raised a num­ber of issues, includ­ing pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel, dis­crim­i­na­tion against Black jurors, judi­cial over­ride of jury deci­sion­mak­ing, seri­ous men­tal ill­ness, and brain…

The United States Supreme Court has request­ed the pro­duc­tion of the appel­late record of a death penal­ty case in which the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) refused to grant a new tri­al to a death-row pris­on­er despite the agree­ment of coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors that the use of faulty foren­sic evi­dence from a dis­cred­it­ed crime lab to con­vict Areli Escobar (pic­tured) denied him a fair…

The Death Penalty Information Center, sup­port­ed by the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, launched a new project on Human Rights and the U.S. Death Penalty on November 4, 2022, with a live-streamed pan­el dis­cus­sion at the German embassy in Washington, D.C. The record­ed event, which fea­tured not­ed experts and was attend­ed by schol­ars, advo­cates, and mem­bers of the world diplo­mat­ic corps, was the first in a series of webi­na­rs that will…

Texas exe­cut­ed Tracy Beatty (pic­tured) on November 9, 2022, after the United States Supreme Court declined to review his chal­lenge to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice​’s refusal to unhand­cuff the men­tal­ly ill and brain dam­aged death-row pris­on­er so that defense men­tal health experts could con­duct men­tal health test­ing his lawyers argued was nec­es­sary in seek­ing clemen­cy and in attempt­ing to demon­strate his mental…

A DPIC analy­sis of 2020 U.S. homi­cide data has found that mur­der rates dur­ing the pan­dem­ic were high­est in states with the death penal­ty and low­est in long-time abolitionist…

Virginia made his­to­ry in 2021 when it became the first Southern state to abol­ish the death penal­ty. Closing the Slaughterhouse: The Inside Story of Death Penalty Abolition in Virginia tells the sto­ry of the commonwealth’s jour­ney from lead­ing exe­cu­tion­er to ground­break­ing abo­li­tion­ist state. Written by jour­nal­ist, author, and anti-death penal­ty advo­cate Dale Brumfield, the book explores Virginia’s his­to­ry sur­round­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, start­ing with…

Oklahoma has once again put off the exe­cu­tion of Richard Glossip, the sev­enth time his pend­ing exe­cu­tion has been stayed or…

A fed­er­al dis­trict court in Texas has heard evi­dence on, and now must decide, whether a severe­ly men­tal­ly ill man is com­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed. On October 24, 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas began pre­sid­ing over the com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing of Scott Panetti (pic­tured), whose case estab­lished the con­sti­tu­tion­al stan­dard for com­pe­ten­cy to be exe­cut­ed, to deter­mine whether he has a ratio­nal under­stand­ing of his death sen­tence and the…

In 1994, the United States Supreme Court held in Simmons v. South Carolina that when the pros­e­cu­tion makes future dan­ger­ous­ness an issue in a cap­i­tal case, a defen­dant has a due process right to inform jurors that he will not be parole eli­gi­ble if he is not sen­tenced to death. For more than a decade, Arizona courts refused to apply that prece­dent. Then, in 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court sum­mar­i­ly struck down that prac­tice in Lynch v. Arizona,…