Publications & Testimony

On April 24, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released a report propos­ing an expan­sion of the fed­er­al death penal­ty, includ­ing adding fir­ing squad, elec­tro­cu­tion, and lethal gas as exe­cu­tion meth­ods. The DOJ char­ac­ter­izes the Biden Administration’s mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions as​“an unprece­dent­ed break from the [DOJ]’s long­stand­ing approach to the death penal­ty,” while cast­ing this new effort as a return to form. The DOJ fur­ther claims that the three…

Today, the state of Texas plans to exe­cute James Broadnax, a Black man who chal­lenged the state for its dis­crim­i­na­to­ry use of peremp­to­ry strikes to exclude every Black juror at his tri­al, in vio­la­tion of the U.S. Supreme Court’s land­mark deci­sion in Batson v. Kentucky (1986). Barring a last-minute stay, Mr. Broadnax’s exe­cu­tion will coin­cide with the 40^th anniver­sary of Batson that put race at the fore­front of the jury selec­tion process. Racial bias in jury selection…

On April 24, 2026, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy released a detailed report, Restoring and Strengthening the Federal Death Penalty, call­ing on the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to rein­state use of a sin­­gle-drug (pen­to­bar­bi­tal) exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, and urg­ing Congress to enact sweep­ing leg­isla­tive changes that would expand the reach and speed of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. Alongside the release of the report, DOJ announced that it has direct­ed BOP to…

On April 16, 2026, Singapore exe­cut­ed 46-year-old Omar bin Yacob Bamadhaj for import­ing 1,009 grams of cannabis, an offense that car­ries a manda­to­ry death sen­tence under the country’s Misuse of Drugs Act, which impos­es cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for import­ing more than 500 grams. His exe­cu­tion marks the eighth car­ried out for drug-relat­ed offens­es in 2026, already exceed­ing half of the fif­teen drug-relat­ed exe­cu­tions record­ed in all of 2025. Although the court determined…

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. Why it Matters: In 2002, the United States Supreme Court held that exe­cut­ing indi­vid­u­als with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. (*Atkins v. Virgina)**.* Before that deci­sion, dozens of peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties were legally executed.

By the time 21-year-old Clarence Curtis Jordan shot a man dur­ing a gro­cery store bur­glary in 1977, he had been strug­gling for most of his life with hal­lu­ci­na­tions and intel­lec­tu­al deficits. His IQ score placed him in the bot­tom 0.5% of the pop­u­la­tion. He iden­ti­fied the pres­i­dent as​“John Hill” and said he often saw​“old, weird, burnt-up look­ing peo­ple” watch­ing him. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) found him incom­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed in 1988. But Mr.