Publications & Testimony

Today, the DPIC office is closed in obser­vance of Juneteenth, which cel­e­brates the eman­ci­pa­tion of enslaved peo­ple in the United States. As we com­mem­o­rate this hol­i­day, we remem­ber the his­tor­i­cal rela­tion­ship between slav­ery, lynch­ing, Jim Crow seg­re­ga­tion, and the death penal­ty and their use as instru­ments of social con­trol to main­tain racial hier­ar­chy. Our September 2020 report, Enduring Injustice, delves into the his­tor­i­cal use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, pro­vid­ing con­text for the…

The South Carolina Supreme Court has vacat­ed death war­rants for two death-row pris­on­ers sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed this month, stay­ing their exe­cu­tions until the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDOC) com­plies with a new­ly enact­ed state law requir­ing that it offer con­demned pris­on­ers the option of being exe­cut­ed by firing…

As the Department of Justice filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court seek­ing rein­state­ment of the death sen­tence imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Boston Marathon bomb­ing, the White House press office issued a state­ment stress­ing the inde­pen­dence of the Department over the cas­es it is pur­su­ing and assert­ing that President Joe Biden has not backed away from his cam­paign promise to work to end the fed­er­al death…

As South Carolina and Arizona pre­pare to resume exe­cu­tions using grue­some meth­ods of the past, Alabama pros­e­cu­tors say the state is near­ly ready to per­form exe­cu­tions using a new, untest­ed method, nitrogen…

A new doc­u­men­tary about the case of Carlos DeLuna, a like­ly inno­cent man who was exe­cut­ed in Texas in 1989, pre­mieres June 14, 2021 at the Tribeca Film…

The Georgia Supreme Court has denied a con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge to the state’s statu­to­ry require­ment that a cap­i­tal defen­dant must prove beyond a rea­son­able doubt that he or she is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled before being declared inel­i­gi­ble for the death…

Raymond Riles (pic­tured), the nation’s longest serv­ing death-row pris­on­er, has been resen­tenced to…

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (pic­tured) has filed motions in a Florida tri­al court seek­ing to block DNA test­ing that the local elect­ed State Attorney had agreed to and a judge had grant­ed in two 45-year-old Orange County death penalty…

Building on what they describe as grow­ing momen­tum to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and greater aware­ness of racial jus­tice con­cerns, a coali­tion of Ohio African-American church and leg­isla­tive lead­ers are putting their weight behind bipar­ti­san leg­is­la­tion to repeal the state’s death…