Publications & Testimony

Testimony and Statements on the Death Penalty

FROM DPIC

For tes­ti­mo­ny by for­mer Executive Director Robert Dunham and for­mer Executive Director Richard C. Dieter, please vis­it our page DPIC Testimony.
 

FROM RELIGIOUS LEADERS AND ORGANIZATIONS

FROM THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY 

FROM ADVOCACY GROUPS

FROM JUDGES, LEGISLATORS, AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS

FROM MURDER VICTIMSFAMILY MEMBERS

Items: 611 — 620


Sep 30, 2022

Report: Black People 7.5 Times More Likely to Be Wrongfully Convicted of Murder than Whites, Risk Even Greater if Victim was White

Black peo­ple are about 7½ times more like­ly to be wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der in the U.S. than are whites, and about 80% more like­ly to be inno­cent than oth­ers con­vict­ed of mur­der, accord­ing to a new report by the National Registry of Exonerations. The already dis­pro­por­tion­ate risk of wrong­ful con­vic­tion, the Registry found, was even worse if the mur­der vic­tim in a case…

Read More

Sep 29, 2022

Texas District Attorney Recommends New Trial for Jewish Death-Row Prisoner Tried Before Anti-Semitic Judge

A Texas dis­trict attor­ney has asked a Dallas judge to over­turn the cap­i­tal mur­der con­vic­tion of Jewish death-row pris­on­er Randy Halprin (pic­tured) because of the vir­u­lent anti-Semitism of the judge who presided over his tri­al and death sen­tence. On September 27, 2022, the sec­ond day of the Jewish high holy day of Rosh Hashanah, Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson filed a legal memorandum with…

Read More

Sep 28, 2022

Oklahoma Lawmaker Calls for Investigation of Prosecutor for Deliberately Withholding Evidence of Innocence in Richard Glossip Retrial

An Oklahoma state rep­re­sen­ta­tive has called for an inves­ti­ga­tion into the prac­tices of the Oklahoma County District Attorney​’s office fol­low­ing addi­tion­al rev­e­la­tions that coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors delib­er­ate­ly with­held excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence and man­u­fac­tured false tes­ti­mo­ny to secure a con­vic­tion and death sen­tence against Richard Glossip in his 2004 retri­al. At a news con­fer­ence on September 22, 2022, the fourth date Oklahoma had set to execute…

Read More

Sep 26, 2022

Federal Court Orders Alabama to Preserve Evidence of Botched Attempted Execution of Alan Miller

A fed­er­al dis­trict court has ordered Alabama state offi­cials to pre­serve evi­dence relat­ed to the state’s failed attempt to exe­cute death-row pris­on­er Alan Miller on September 22, 2022. The botched exe­cu­tion attempt, Alabama’s third since 2018, came after a divid­ed U.S. Supreme Court issued an after-hours exe­cu­­tion-night order set­ting aside with­out opin­ion an injunc­tion that had barred the state from exe­cut­ing Miller​“by any method oth­er than nitro­gen hypox­ia.” Prison…

Read More

Sep 23, 2022

North Carolina ACLU Challenges Death Qualification of Jurors as Racially and Sexually Discriminatory

Lawyers for a North Carolina cap­i­tal defen­dant have filed a sweep­ing chal­lenge to the method by which death-penal­­ty jurors are empan­eled, argu­ing that the com­bi­na­tion of a process known as​“death qual­i­fi­ca­tion” and dis­cre­tionary jury strikes pro­duces a jury so racial­ly and sex­u­al­ly unrep­re­sen­ta­tive that it vio­lates a defendant’s right to…

Read More

Sep 21, 2022

Alabama Federal Court Issues Injunction Halting Execution of Alan Miller

A fed­er­al dis­trict court issued an order on September 19, 2022 to halt the sched­uled September 22, 2022 exe­cu­tion of Alabama death-row pris­on­er Alan Miller​“by any method oth­er than nitro­gen hypox­ia,” lead­ing to a series of last-minute appeals by Alabama pros­e­cu­tors and an after-hours exe­cu­­tion-night rul­ing by the U.S. Supreme Court to let the exe­cu­tion go for­ward. Alabama sub­se­quent­ly called off the exe­cu­tion when it became…

Read More

Sep 20, 2022

Equatorial Guinea Becomes 25th African Country to Abolish Death Penalty

Equatorial Guinea has abol­ished the death penal­ty, becom­ing the 25th African nation to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and the fourth in the past two years. According to state tele­vi­sion reports, on September 19, 2022, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo signed into law a new crim­i­nal code that removes the death penal­ty from the statute books of the cen­tral African nation of 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple on the continent’s…

Read More