Publications & Testimony

In the May 2022 episode of Discussions With DPIC, Professor Alexis Hoag (pic­tured) of Brooklyn Law School joined DPIC Deputy Director Ngozi Ndulue for a wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion mark­ing the 35^th anniver­sary of McCleskey v. Kemp, a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion that reject­ed a con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge to the death penal­ty that showed strong sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence of racial dis­par­i­ties in cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions and death sen­tences. Professor Hoag, for­mer­ly an attor­ney at the…

Documents that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) with­held from pub­lic dis­clo­sure for months reveal that ​“con­fu­sion and lack of train­ing” have left the state ​“woe­ful­ly unpre­pared to car­ry out an exe­cu­tion,” accord­ing to the American Civil Liberties…

Support for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Louisiana has fall­en by sev­en per­cent­age points in the last four years, accord­ing to the 2022 Louisiana Survey by the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs at Louisiana State…

An Arizona tri­al court has ruled that Clarence Dixon, a death-row pris­on­er with audi­to­ry and visu­al hal­lu­ci­na­tions and delu­sion­al thought process­es from para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia, is com­pe­tent to be…

In a case legal experts say could redress a mis­car­riage of jus­tice or insti­tu­tion­al­ize it, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the Texas fed­er­al courts’ refusal to per­mit DNA test­ing of crime-scene evi­dence that could poten­tial­ly exon­er­ate death-row pris­on­er Rodney…

The cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing tri­al of Nikolas Cruz in the 2018 mass shoot­ing at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (pic­tured) in Parkland, Florida has been delayed once again as jury selec­tion in the high-pro­file case devolved into chaos and…

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (pic­tured) has paused all exe­cu­tions sched­uled for 2022 and called for an ​“inde­pen­dent review” of the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col to address a ​“tech­ni­cal over­sight” that led him to halt Oscar Franklin Smith​’s exe­cu­tion less than a half-hour before it was sched­uled to be car­ried out on April 21,…

The U.S. Supreme Court has heard argu­ment in two death penal­ty cas­es that present high­ly tech­ni­cal legal issues that could pro­found­ly affect the extent to which pris­on­ers con­vict­ed in state courts will have mean­ing­ful access to fed­er­al review of their…

Carman Deck (pic­tured) has been sen­tenced to death three times. Each of those death sen­tences were over­turned — once by the U.S. Supreme Court — as a result of prej­u­di­cial con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tions in his tri­als. Nonetheless, he faces exe­cu­tion in Missouri on May 3, 2022 because a pro­ce­dur­al tech­ni­cal­i­ty over­turned his third grant of relief, block­ing him from pre­sent­ing his claim that crit­i­cal mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence call­ing for a sen­tence less than death had…

Five years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas death sen­tence when an expert wit­ness had tes­ti­fied that a Black defen­dant posed an increased risk of com­mit­ting future acts of vio­lence because of his race, the Court has refused to review anoth­er Texas cap­i­tal case in which the tri­al court per­mit­ted a juror to serve who expressed the very same…