Publications & Testimony

The California leg­is­la­ture has tak­en a major stride towards reform­ing the state’s death-penal­ty prac­tices, pass­ing two bills that would remove from death row indi­vid­u­als whose cap­i­tal con­vic­tions were the prod­uct of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and those whose dete­ri­o­rat­ed men­tal con­di­tion has left them permanently mentally…

The nation­wide ero­sion of the death penal­ty in the United States con­tin­ued in the quar­ter of 2022, as the death rows of eleven states decreased in size and no state or fed­er­al death row grew larg­er, accord­ing to the Legal Defense Fund’s Spring 2022 Death Row USA (DRUSA) report on capital…

A fed­er­al appeals court in Ohio has over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on an African American defen­dant whose defense lawyer pre­sent­ed tes­ti­mo­ny from a clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist that one quar­ter of urban Black men were sociopaths who should be locked up or thrown…

Five years after for­mer Gov. Eric Greitens issued an exe­cu­tion-day reprieve for a Board of Inquiry to address ques­tions of inno­cence, Marcellus Williams remains on Missouri​’s death row. Though the board pre­sent­ed its rec­om­men­da­tions more than a year ago, cur­rent Gov. Mike Parson has tak­en no action on the…

On the eighth anniver­sary of the August 19, 2014 mur­der of kid­napped jour­nal­ist James Foley, a U.S. fed­er­al dis­trict court in Virginia sen­tenced his killer, Islamic State mil­i­tant El Shafee Elsheikh, to eight life sen­tences in prison. His moth­er, Diane Foley (pic­tured), a lead­ing advo­cate for Americans held hostage abroad, hailed the life sen­tence as ​“a huge vic­to­ry” and ​“a very important…

Racial dis­par­i­ties in U.S. death sen­tences imposed on late ado­les­cent offend­ers have grown sub­stan­tial­ly since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment against juve­nile offend­ers in 2005, accord­ing to a new report by University of North Carolina polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Frank R. Baumgartner…

A Death Penalty Information Center review of data from the National Registry of Exonerations has found that the pur­suit or threat­ened use of the death penal­ty by police or pros­e­cu­tors in nine dif­fer­ent states led to the wrong­ful mur­der con­vic­tions of at least twelve inno­cent peo­ple who were exonerated in…

The Idaho Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s con­sti­tu­tion per­mits a gov­er­nor to reject clemen­cy rec­om­men­da­tions made by the Commission of Pardons and Parole, revers­ing a low­er court’s deci­sion that had blocked the state from exe­cut­ing ter­mi­nal­ly ill pris­on­er Gerald Pizzuto (pic­tured). The rul­ing may allow Idaho to car­ry out its first exe­cu­tion in more than a…

In the August 2022 Discussions With DPIC pod­cast, for­mer Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry and for­mer U.S. Magistrate Judge Andy Lester (pic­tured), two of the co-chairs of the bipar­ti­san Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission, call on state offi­cials not to rush for­ward with the state’s planned exe­cu­tion of 25 pris­on­ers. Speaking with DPIC exec­u­tive direc­tor Robert Dunham, Governor Henry, a Democrat, and Judge Lester, a Republican, discuss the…