Publications & Testimony

The California Supreme Court heard oral argu­ment on June 2, 2021 in a cap­i­tal case whose out­come could affect the fate of hun­dreds of pris­on­ers on the state’s death row. Supported by friend-of-the-court briefs by California Governor Gavin Newsom and an alliance of pro­gres­sive California dis­trict attor­neys, lawyers for death row pris­on­er Don’te McDaniel argued to the court that California’s cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing scheme is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because it fails to…

A new poll by the Pew Research Center reports that sup­port for the death penal­ty is down in the United States but may be high­er than pre­vi­ous esti­mates because some poll respon­dents are unwill­ing to admit to a live poll­ster that they sup­port capital…

In 1989, Nevada prison doc­tor, Dr. Karen Gedney (pic­tured) refused a request by state offi­cials to write a pre­scrip­tion for exe­cu­tion drugs, believ­ing that doing so vio­lat­ed her med­ical oath to do no harm and her duty to pro­vide med­ical care to pris­on­ers. In the sec­ond episode of the Discussions With DPIC podcast’s Rethinking Public Safety series, Dr. Gedney speaks with DPIC Managing Director Anne Holsinger about this and…

Arizona report­ed­ly has ​“refur­bished” its gas cham­ber and has spent more than $2,000 to acquire ingre­di­ents to exe­cute pris­on­ers with cyanide gas, the same gas used by the Nazis to mur­der more than one mil­lion men, women, and chil­dren dur­ing the…

California Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into the case of Kevin Cooper, who has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence in the 1983 quadru­ple-mur­der for which he was sen­tenced to death. Newsom’s May 28, 2021 exec­u­tive order appoints the law firm Morrison and Foerster, LLP as Special Counsel to the California Board of Parole Hearings and directs the firm to ​“con­duct a full review of the tri­al and appel­late records in [Cooper’s]…

In the first Racial Justice Act case to reach a hear­ing since the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the state legislature’s attempt to retroac­tive­ly repeal the land­mark law, a North Carolina judge has ordered state pros­e­cu­tors to pro­duce decades of data on jury selec­tion in cap­i­tal cas­es. On May 20, 2021, Superior Court Judge Wayland Sermons (pic­tured) grant­ed a request from the legal team rep­re­sent­ing death-row pris­on­er Hasson…

Lawyers for fed­er­al death row pris­on­er Dylann Roof argued to a fed­er­al appeals court that the avowed white supremacist’s con­vic­tions and death sen­tences in his tri­al for the 2015 mur­ders of nine Black church­go­ers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina should be over­turned because the judge pre­sid­ing over his case uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly per­mit­ted Roof to rep­re­sent him­self while mentally…

Saying that ​“the pri­vate sec­tor can no longer be a silent bystander in the soci­ety it inhab­its,” for­mer Unilever CEO Paul Polman, has called on busi­ness lead­ers around the world to take a stand against the death…