Publications & Testimony

A proposed death penalty repeal bill in the Ohio legislature is drawing attention to the state’s five-year pause on executions, and leading state officials from both parties to question whether the death penalty system is working. Ohio Attorney General David Yost (pictured) summed up the situation by saying, “This system satisfies nobody. Those who oppose the death penalty want it abolished altogether, not ticking away like a time bomb that might or might not explode. Those who support the…

In a recently published academic article, Emory University History Professor Daniel LaChance writes about an important and underrecognized distinction in the way newspaper editors and journalists covered the executions of Black and white men in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Professor LaChance argues that the portrayals of the defendants made legal executions “a high-status punishment that respected the whiteness of those who suffered it.” While the length and detail of articles about…

In North Carolina, a coalition of activists is calling on Governor Roy Cooper to commute the death sentences of 136 people “as an act of racial justice” before he leaves office in 2024. Edward “Ed” Chapman, a death row exoneree who spent 14 years on death row, along with other advocates with the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, are urging Gov. Cooper to grant clemency to all death-sentenced individuals in North Carolina “because of the injustices of the death…

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with John Bessler (pictured), Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Professor Bessler is the author of several books on the death penalty, including his 2023 book The Death Penalty’s Denial of Fundamental Human Rights: International Law, State Practice, and the Emerging Abolitionist Norm. In his most recent book, Professor Bessler argues that the death penalty should be classified…

On November 30, 2023, the Mississippi Supreme Court ordered that the state’s request to set an execution date for death row prisoner Willie Manning be held until the court rules on a recent petition seeking to bring new evidence of Mr. Manning’s innocence. Mr. Manning’s attorneys had filed a petition at the court on September 29, asking for an opportunity to present recantations from jailhouse informants who testified against Mr. Manning, as well as new expert analysis debunking the…

On November 7, Chinese media reported that former primary school principal Zhang Longji was executed via lethal injection for raping five girls, age 8 – 12, and sexually molesting 17 girls, age 8 – 14. Sun Deshun, former president of China CITIC Bank Corporation Limited, who was convicted of accepting $1 billion yuan ($137 million) in bribes, was given a suspended death sentence by the Intermediate People’s Court in Jinan on November 10. If no new crimes are committed during the two-year…

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court, died at the age of 93 on December 1, 2023. In her 25-year tenure on the Court, Justice O’Connor authored opinions in several landmark death penalty cases, including decisions that upheld the use of the death penalty for vulnerable groups and people with diminished culpability. However, she demonstrated an early interest in improving capital defense standards, and in her later years on the Court expressed…

Oklahoma executed Phillip Hancock (pictured) on November 30, 2023, following Governor Kevin Stitt’s rejection of the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board’s recommendation that his sentence be f commuted to life without parole. The governor’s indecision left Mr. Hancock waiting anxiously right up to the time of his scheduled execution when the governor’s office told the prison warden to proceed. Mr. Hancock is the 123^rd person executed in Oklahoma since the reinstatement of the death penalty in…

Against a backdrop of high-profile innocence cases and the U.S. Supreme Court’s seeming indifference to them, the 2023 Gallup poll found that more Americans now believe that the death penalty is administered unfairly than fairly. Use of the death penalty remained geographically isolated, with only five states carrying out executions and only seven imposing death sentences. For the ninth consecutive year, fewer than 30 people were executed and fewer than 50 were sentenced to death. These…

Tomorrow, the Death Penalty Information Center will release a report that documents how racial bias and violence affected the past use of the death penalty in Missouri and how that history continues to influence the current administration of capital punishment in the state. Compromised Justice: How A Legacy of Racial Violence Informs Missouri’s Death Penalty Today, scheduled for release on December 1, 2023, notes that historically and into the present day, Missouri’s death penalty has been…