Publications & Testimony

The same brand of Southern pride that inspired lynch­ings after the U.S. Civil War fuels sup­port for the death penal­ty today, writes legal ana­lyst Joia Erin Thornton (pic­tured) in a com­men­tary on the web pub­li­ca­tion, Blavity. In The Dark Southern Pride Upholding The Barbaric Death Penalty, pub­lished December 23, 2021, Thornton argues that, just as Southern states in Reconstruction turned to extreme carcer­al pun­ish­ments to reim­pose vio­lent con­trol over Black…

Kentucky​’s death penal­ty is racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, geo­graph­i­cal­ly arbi­trary, and rid­dled with sys­temic flaws, a new study of the commonwealth’s use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has…

In the January 2022 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Contra Costa County, California District Attorney Diana Becton (pic­tured), speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about the rise in reform pros­e­cu­tors across the coun­try, the inher­ent flaws in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment that led her to work along­side oth­er reform pros­e­cu­tors to end the death penal­ty, and her efforts as dis­trict attor­ney to bring fair­ness and equi­ty to the criminal…

A coali­tion of dis­abil­i­ty rights groups, legal experts, and con­ser­v­a­tive advo­cates are urg­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the unique­ly harsh bur­den of proof Georgia has imposed upon defen­dants seek­ing to estab­lish their inel­i­gi­bil­i­ty for the death penal­ty because of intellectual…

An Alabama fed­er­al judge has issued an order halt­ing the sched­uled January 27, 2022 exe­cu­tion of Matthew Reeves…

As 2021 came to a close, edi­to­r­i­al writ­ers in four death penal­ty states called for leg­isla­tive and exec­u­tive action to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment or fur­ther lim­it its…

On January 6, 1959, Richard and Mildred Loving were con­vict­ed on felony charges of ​“mis­ce­gena­tion” under Virginia​’s Racial Integrity Act, which crim­i­nal­ized inter­ra­cial mar­riage. The tri­al court sen­tenced them to one year in prison but sus­pend­ed the sen­tence con­di­tioned upon their leav­ing Virginia and not return­ing togeth­er for 25 years. The court…

A for­mer con­ser­v­a­tive fed­er­al judge and U.S. Solicitor General has called on the United States Supreme Court to vacate a rul­ing by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) that allowed a Texas death sen­tence to stand in the face of an ear­li­er Supreme Court rul­ing that defense coun­sel had unrea­son­ably failed to present a ​“tidal wave” of ​“com­pelling mitigating…

A hos­pice-bound death-row pris­on­er has filed a motion in Idaho state court chal­leng­ing the author­i­ty of Governor Brad Little to reject a par­dons com­mis­sion rec­om­men­da­tion that his death sen­tence be com­mut­ed to life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of…

2021 — Proposed legislationStates with bills to abol­ish death penal­ty indi­cat­ed with *Session dates via…