Publications & Testimony

Amid a vio­lent crack­down on pro-democ­ra­­cy move­ments, Myanmar’s mil­i­tary jun­ta exe­cut­ed four men, includ­ing a promi­nent activist and a former…

Former Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry (pic­tured) and for­mer U.S. Magistrate Judge Andy Lester, who co-chaired the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission in 2017, have called on state offi­cials to halt the sched­uled exe­cu­tions of 25 death-row…

Lawyers for James Coddington (pic­tured), the first per­son sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed as part of Oklahoma’s two-year exe­cu­tion spree, are seek­ing clemen­cy for a man they say​“exem­pli­fies the prin­ci­ples of redemp­tion.” In a peti­tion filed July 15, 2022, they ask the Oklahoma Pardons and Parole Board to com­mute Coddington’s death sen­tence to life with­out parole, describ­ing Coddington’s sin­cere remorse and exemplary…

If Alabama exe­cutes Joe Nathan James on July 28, 2022 for the mur­der of Faith Hall, it can­not claim to be doing jus­tice for her or her fam­i­ly. Hall’s two daugh­ters, Terrlyn and Toni Hall (pic­tured, far left and far right) and her broth­er Helvetius Hall (pic­tured, mid­dle), oppose James’ exe­cu­tion and say Faith would oppose…

Data from fifty years of the mod­ern U.S. death penal­ty reveal​“a sys­tem that is rife with error, filled with dis­crim­i­na­tion, [and] very, very dif­fi­cult to fair­ly admin­is­ter,” Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham says in the July episode the Discussions with DPIC pod­cast. The episode, a dis­cus­sion between Dunham and 2021 – 2022 DPIC Data Fellow Aimee Breaux about the launch of DPIC’s ground­break­ing Death Penalty Census data­base, was…

As Richard Glossip faces an exe­cu­tion date for the fourth time, his case is a per­fect exam­ple of the prob­lems in the death-penal­­ty sys­tem that then-Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer (pic­tured) iden­ti­fied in his 2015 land­mark dis­sent in Glossip v. Gross. In an analy­sis pub­lished by Slate, Jeremy Stahl writes,​“Whether or not Richard Glossip is ulti­mate­ly exe­cut­ed for a crime he like­ly did not com­mit, his and Breyer’s…

A new study sug­gests that Idaho​’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute fails to nar­row the use of the death penal­ty to the​“worst of the worst” crimes, rais­ing ques­tions about its con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty. In Narrowing Death Eligibility in Idaho: An Empirical and Constitutional Analysis, pub­lished in the February 2022 issue of the Idaho Law Review, Aliza Plener Cover (pic­tured) argues based on data from near­ly 20 years of murder…

The Mississippi Supreme Court has denied addi­tion­al DNA test­ing to death-row pris­on­er Willie Manning (pic­tured). Manning, who was sen­tenced to death in Oktibbeha County in 1994 and in 1996 for two sep­a­rate crimes, has main­tained his inno­cence of both crimes. He was exon­er­at­ed of the 1996 con­vic­tion in 2015 after police and pros­e­cu­tors unlaw­ful­ly with­held exculpatory evidence…

Executions have surged in Iran in the first half of 2022, dou­bling the total car­ried out dur­ing the same time span in 2021, human rights advocates…

Marcus Robinson (pic­tured), the first per­son to be grant­ed relief under North Carolina​’s trail­blaz­ing Racial Justice Act, has died. Robinson, who was sen­tenced to death in 1994 for a crime he com­mit­ted short­ly after turn­ing 18, died June 9, 2022. He was…