Publications & Testimony

Victims’ families, retired Judge James Brogan, and former Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Director Gary Mohr have publicly expressed support for legislation pending in both the state Senate and House that would abolish the death penalty in Ohio. Dozens of victims’ family members signed onto a letter sent to Ohio legislators describing a “broken system” that “fails victims’ families.” The letter states: “In Ohio, the death penalty is a false promise that goes unfulfilled, leaving…

A death-sentenced prisoner whose appeal was lost for thirty years was resentenced to life with parole on November 14, 2023, when the Harris County, Texas District Attorney’s office said it is no longer pursuing the death penalty. Syed Rabbani, a Bangladeshi national, has been on death row since 1988 for a fatal Houston shooting. Mr. Rabbani filed his appeal in 1994, but it remained pending in the Harris County Court system until 2022, when the Harris County District Clerk’s Office rediscovered…

A recent article in the Post and Courier details research into the reasons why 18 death sentences have been overturned in South Carolina, finding one of the main reasons to be prosecutorial misconduct. Research found that 11 of the 18 prisoners received new sentences because of prosecutorial misconduct, while the other seven received new sentences after the decision in Atkins v. Virginia because they had intellectual disability. The Post and Courier’s research indicates that four of the 18 men…

Death-row exoneree Walter Ogrod’s federal lawsuit against the City of Philadelphia and members of the Philadelphia Police Department was settled for $9.1 million on November 3, 2023. Mr. Ogrod, who was exonerated in 2020 after 23 years on death row, was initially convicted in 1996 based on a coerced confession and false testimony from jailhouse informants in a case further tainted by police and prosecutorial misconduct and inadequate legal representation at trial. In a statement confirming the…

On November 8, 2023, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey scheduled an execution date for Kenneth Smith, marking the first attempt by a U.S. state to use nitrogen gas in an execution. Mr. Smith was convicted of the 1988 murder-for-hire death of Elizabeth Sennett in Jefferson County, Alabama and has been on death row for nearly 34 years. Following the state Supreme Court’s 6 – 2 decision greenlighting Attorney General Steve Marshall’s request for an execution warrant, Gov. Ivey set a 32-hour execution date…

In 2015, DPIC’s Battle Scars report brought worldwide attention to the issue of military veterans on death row. DPIC found approximately 300 veterans incarcerated under a sentence of death, representing at least 10% of death row, and many more who had been executed. Since that report, research and understanding about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), substance use disorders, and mental illness among veterans has only grown. A 2023 survey of members of the…

On November 2, 2023, Demetrius Minor, the National Manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty and Davis Turner, a retired attorney whose brother was murdered in Nashville in 2009 and a board member of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, co-authored an op-ed in The Tennessean discussing a recent report by the Death Penalty Information Center. “Doomed to Repeat: The Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty” details the history of racial violence and…

On October 26, 2023, Judge Coral Sanchez of Utah’s Third Circuit Court heard arguments in a lawsuit filed by five death-sentenced prisoners against the State in April. Ralph Menzies, Troy Kell, Michael Archuleta, Douglas Carter, and Taberon Honie seek an order vacating Utah’s current execution protocol and enjoining its use. The lawsuit argues that the State’s two-pronged protocol, with lethal injection as the default method of execution and firing squad as a backup, constitutes cruel and…

A bill to repeal the death penalty in Pennsylvania has passed a committee in the commonwealth’s House of Representatives. The Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee voted 15 – 10 in favor of HB 999 on October 31, 2023. That vote is the first step toward abolishing the death penalty in Pennsylvania, which has had a formal moratorium on executions since 2015 and has not executed anyone since 1999. Bill sponsor Rep. Chris Rabb (D – Philadelphia) provided several reasons for repeal, including the 11…

The Gallup Crime Survey has asked about the fairness of death penalty application in the United States since 2000. For the first time, the October 2023 survey reports that more Americans believe the death penalty is applied unfairly (50%) than fairly (47%). Between 2000 and 2015, 51%-61% of Americans said they thought capital punishment was applied fairly in the U.S., but this number has been dropping since 2016. This year’s number of 47% represents a historic low in the history of Gallup’s…