Publications & Testimony

Legal reform advo­cates and a com­mit­tee of high-pro­file Supreme Court prac­ti­tion­ers have urged the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States to rec­om­mend changes in the way the Court han­dles emer­gency appli­ca­tions for stays of exe­cu­tions in death-penalty…

As President Biden con­sid­ers his administration’s pol­i­cy on the fed­er­al death penal­ty, his expressed oppo­si­tion to the pun­ish­ment may be buoyed by a new study that has found that ​“Americans sup­port cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment less than they have at any time since the mod­ern death penal­ty sys­tem was estab­lished in…

Racial bias in jury selec­tion is com­pro­mis­ing the ​“cred­i­bil­i­ty, reli­a­bil­i­ty, and integri­ty of the legal sys­tem,” and its effects are espe­cial­ly pro­nounced in death penal­ty cas­es, a new report from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) has…

Two Ohio civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions have filed suit against the state’s parole board, alleg­ing that the board has an ille­gal pol­i­cy of auto­mat­i­cal­ly deny­ing parole to any­one who was for­mer­ly sen­tenced to…

Seven months into 2021, exe­cu­tions in the United States are near his­toric lows. As of the end of July, only the for­mer fed­er­al admin­is­tra­tion and the state of Texas had car­ried out any exe­cu­tions, and the five pris­on­ers put to death placed the coun­try on pace for the fewest exe­cu­tions since five states car­ried out a total of five exe­cu­tions in…

The Nevada Press Association has filed a fed­er­al law­suit against Nevada state offi­cials and the Nevada Department of Corrections chal­leng­ing lim­i­ta­tions the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col places on the media’s abil­i­ty to wit­ness and report on…

When Dennis Perry stood with his defense team on the steps of the Brunswick, Georgia cour­t­house (pic­tured) after a tri­al judge dis­missed all charges against him, he was a free man, exon­er­at­ed of the racial­ly moti­vat­ed mur­ders of a dea­con and his wife in a local Black church in 1985. His case was one of at least four death-penal­ty pros­e­cu­tions involv­ing mis­con­duct by Brunswick Judicial Circuit Assistant District Attorney John B. Johnson III.

A fed­er­al appeals court has upheld a low­er court’s deci­sion grant­i­ng a new tri­al to a Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­er whose retained lawyer was pre­vent­ed from rep­re­sent­ing him at…

In the July 2021 episode of Discussions with DPIC, DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham talks with Marc Bookman, the co-founder and Executive Director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation (ACCR), about his crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed new book, A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12…

The par­lia­ment of Sierra Leone vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly on July 23, 2021 to abol­ish the death penal­ty, mak­ing the West African nation of 7.8 mil­lion peo­ple the 23^rd coun­try on the con­ti­nent and the 110^th world­wide to end capital…