Publications & Testimony

In this month’s Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Margot Ravenscroft (pictured), Director of AMICUS UK, a British charity whose volunteers support the capital defense effort in the United States. Ms. Ravenscroft describes how AMICUS was founded by a British woman who became a pen friend to a Louisiana death row prisoner Andrew Lee Jones. Jane Officer, a retired schoolteacher, spent many years exchanging letters with Mr. Jones and returned to the UK after his…

Though the Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution forbids the death penalty for a person who is “insane” at the time of execution, it has never held that the execution of people with serious mental illness is unconstitutional. Experts have found that two in five people executed between 2000 and 2015 had a mental illness diagnosis such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or PTSD. Since 2017, at least eleven states have attempted to strengthen protections for vulnerable prisoners by…

On October 23, 2023, 38 individuals were sentenced to death for the mob killing of Jamal Ben Ismail, who had been mistakenly identified as the arsonist responsible for the August 2021 fires that killed 90 people in the northwest region. Despite the death sentences, all prisoners will be resentenced to life imprisonment due to the nationwide moratorium in place since 1993 when the last executions occurred. Belarus After Alexander Taratuta was sentenced to death for murder, the European Union…

On October 30, 2023, the United States Supreme Court denied Texas death-sentenced prisoner Brent Brewer’s (pictured) petition for certiorari, clearing the way for his scheduled execution on November 9^th. Mr. Brewer’s attorneys argue that unreliable “future dangerousness” junk science testimony from a psychiatrist who never even met Mr. Brewer resulted in his death sentence. Following the Supreme Court’s decision, attorneys for Mr. Brewer submitted a clemency application, detailing the fact that…

On October 26, 2023, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) granted a stay of execution for William Speer, who was set to be executed the same evening for the killing of another prisoner 26 years ago. Mr. Speer has been scheduled to die by lethal injection, but his attorneys asked the TCCA to pause his execution over allegations that prosecutors failed to disclose evidence at trial, knowingly presented false testimony, and that his trial lawyers provided inadequate representation by failing…

On October 22, 2023, Vic Fischer, the last surviving signer of the Alaskan state constitution, died at age 99. Mr. Fischer, along with Rep. Warren Taylor, sponsored the death penalty abolition bill that passed in the Alaska territory’s legislature in 1957, two years before Alaska gained statehood. The bill read: “The death penalty is and shall hereafter be abolished as punishment in Alaska for the commission of any crime.” “I can see the dark side as well as anyone, but the spirit of humanism…

In August 2023, Alabama released the first-ever execution protocol for nitrogen hypoxia, an untested execution method in which prisoners will be put to death by suffocation as they are forced to breathe pure nitrogen gas. Alabama’s heavily redacted protocol provides that prisoners will be fitted with a mask and breathing tube to control the gas, which will slowly deprive them of oxygen. However, use of this untested method may also pose dangers to spiritual advisors and prison staff in the…

In July 2020, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, under the direction of Attorney General Bill Barr, resumed federal executions for the first time in 17 years. Over the course of the following six months, 13 federal death row prisoners were executed. During those six months, the WFIU News team was granted the opportunity to report on and witness all 13 executions at United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute in Indiana. In the time since these executions, the WFIU News team collected…

The Death Penalty Information Center has updated its Death Penalty Census, a database of every death sentence imposed since 1972. The database now contains information accurate as of January 1, 2022, inclusive of the 50^th year of the modern death penalty. The Census contains information on 9,820 death sentences imposed on 8,842 defendants. It includes the name, race, and gender of each defendant, along with the region, state, county, and year in which the sentence was imposed. When it was…

On October 18, 2023, the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole delayed the scheduled execution for Thomas Creech in order to provide him with a full clemency hearing. A date for the hearing has not yet been scheduled. An Ada County, Idaho judge previously issued a death warrant for Mr. Creech, who has been on death row for nearly 44 years, setting his execution for November 8, 2023. The Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) announced that they have secured the appropriate drugs to carry out a…