Publications & Testimony

The Oklahoma Attorney General​’s office has agreed to a stay of exe­cu­tion for a severe­ly men­tal­ly ill death-row pris­on­er who may be incom­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed, while the state’s Pardon and Parole Board denied clemen­cy to two oth­er pris­on­ers set to be put to death in Oklahoma​’s five-month scheduled execution…

In the December 2021 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Death Penalty Information Center Deputy Director Ngozi Ndulue inter­views State Representative Jean Schmidt (pic­tured) about her work as a pri­ma­ry spon­sor of a bill in the Ohio House of Representatives that would abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state. A long-time Republican elect­ed offi­cial, Rep. Schmidt also served in the U.S. House of Representatives for ten years. She avid­ly supported the…

More than 2,000 cities across the world lit up mon­u­ments on November 30, 2021 in a glob­al demon­stra­tion to raise aware­ness about the death penal­ty. The inter­na­tion­al cam­paign — called ​“Cities for Life” — was orga­nized by the Community of Sant’Egidio, a lay Catholic asso­ci­a­tion ded­i­cat­ed to social…

The sis­ter of a ter­mi­nal­ly ill death-row pris­on­er who has been in hos­pice care since 2019 has asked the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole to rec­om­mend that he be grant­ed clemen­cy so he can ​“die on God’s…

Alabama death-row pris­on­er Doyle Lee Hamm (pic­tured), whose botched exe­cu­tion attempt was called off in 2018 after 2½ hours of unsuc­cess­ful attempts to set an intra­venous exe­cu­tion line, has died on death row. He was 64 years…

More than 42 years after his wrong­ful cap­i­tal mur­der con­vic­tion in June 1979, a Missouri judge has set Kevin Strickland (pic­tured)…

The Committee on Revision of the Penal Code, cre­at­ed by the California state leg­is­la­ture to review the state’s crim­i­nal laws, has issued a report unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ing that the state repeal its death penal­ty. The six-mem­ber committee’s 39-page Death Penalty Report, released November 17, 2021, also offers inter­me­di­ate rec­om­men­da­tions for reduc­ing the size of California’s near­ly 700-per­son death row — the largest of any state in the…

After years of seek­ing to exe­cute Tennessee death-row pris­on­er Pervis Payne (pic­tured) for a dou­ble-mur­der he has long insist­ed he did not com­mit, the Shelby County District Attorney​’s office has con­ced­ed that Payne is inel­i­gi­ble for the death…

Public sup­port for the death penal­ty again polled at a half-cen­tu­ry low, with oppo­si­tion remain­ing at its high­est lev­el since May 1966, accord­ing to the 2021 Gallup poll on Americans’ atti­tudes about capital…