Publications & Testimony

On June 1, 2026, the California Supreme Court reversed the death sen­tence of Anthony Bankston under the retroac­tive appli­ca­tion of the California Racial Justice Act (CRJA) – the first cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment rever­sal under this Act in California’s his­to­ry. The opin­ion asserts: > ​“In light of the pas­sage of the RJA, we now make clear that, what­ev­er the intent behind telling the sto­ry may be, the Bengal tiger sto­ry should no longer be told in California court­rooms. We have…

According to Amnesty International’s annu­al death penal­ty report, 17 coun­tries car­ried out a total of at least 2,707 exe­cu­tions in 2025. Although the low num­ber of exe­cut­ing coun­tries was con­sis­tent with the annu­al total of 20 exe­cut­ing coun­tries or few­er since 2018, the num­ber of exe­cu­tions marked the high­est glob­al total since 1981. The 78% increase in known exe­cu­tions from 2024 to 2025 was pri­mar­i­ly dri­ven by Iran, which account­ed for 80% of the global total…

\Update 9:17pm ET, June 11, 2026: [The U.S. Supreme Court denied Alabama’s appeal. Mr. Lee’s exe­cu­tion will not pro­ceed as sched­uled.] On June 9, 2026, an Alabama fed­er­al dis­trict judge​“per­ma­nent­ly enjoined” state offi­cials from using nitro­gen gas to exe­cute death-sen­­tenced pris­on­er Jeffery Lee after find­ing that the state’s nitro­gen exe­cu­tion pro­to­col vio­lates the Eighth Amendment’s pro­hi­bi­tion on cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. Judge Emily Marks issued her…

DPI’s​“What to Know” series exam­ines cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from mul­ti­ple angles, one top­ic at a time. Each install­ment pro­vides essen­tial facts and data on spe­cif­ic aspects of the death penal­ty. This install­ment looks at clemen­cy: what it is, who holds the pow­er, and how often it changes the out­come of a cap­i­tal case. Why it mat­ters: The U.S. Supreme Court has described clemen­cy as the​“fail safe” of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, the last rem­e­dy for a wrongful…

A spokesper­son for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment will not seek a death sen­tence for Vance Boelter, the man accused of killing Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her hus­band, Mark Hortman. Mr. Boelter is charged with their mur­ders and stalk­ing, but DOJ said that stalk­ing like­ly would not meet the def­i­n­i­tion of a​“crime of vio­lence,” which would be nec­es­sary to secure a fed­er­al death sen­tence. Mr. Boelter also…

On May 28, 2026, an Alabama fed­er­al dis­trict judge ruled that nitro­gen gas exe­cu­tions are con­sti­tu­tion­al and do not vio­late the Eighth Amendment’s pro­tec­tion against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. In the first fed­er­al bench tri­al exam­in­ing nitro­gen gas as a method of exe­cu­tion, U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks found that death-sen­­tenced pris­on­er Jeffery Lee​“failed to prove that [Alabama’s gas] Protocol caus­es more than​‘the nec­es­sary suffering involved…

In a June 1, 2026, op-ed in The New York Times, Maria DeLiberato, senior coun­sel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Capital Punishment Project, offers a first-per­­son account of the May 21 attempt by Tennessee to exe­cute her client, Tony Carruthers — and the hour of suf­fer­ing she wit­nessed before Governor Bill Lee called off his exe­cu­tion. Ms. DeLiberato, who joined Mr. Carruthers’ legal team just two months before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion date, describes entering the…

In recent weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court issued deci­sions regard­ing two key types of claims that often appear in cap­i­tal cas­es: pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. A bipar­ti­san group of con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­al jus­tices car­ried each deci­sion. The Court ruled in favor of Mississippi pris­on­er Terry Pitchford, allow­ing his jury dis­crim­i­na­tion claim to pro­ceed, as well as Florida pris­on­er Gary Whitton, based on a low­er court error in…