Publications & Testimony

In the March 31, 2021 pod­cast episode of Discussions with DPIC, man­ag­ing direc­tor of DPIC, Anne Holsinger, and Raphael Sperry, pres­i­dent of Architects/​Designers/​Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), dis­cuss the American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) new ethics pol­i­cy pro­hibit­ing mem­bers from design­ing exe­cu­tion cham­bers and death-row soli­tary con­fine­ment cells. ​“Architects have been com­plic­it in human rights abuse by designing…

Virginia​’s cap­i­tal defend­ers have ​“worked them­selves out of a job,” accord­ing to David Johnson, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission. The commonwealth’s four cap­i­tal defense offices, which opened in 2002, are cred­it­ed with bring­ing about a dra­mat­ic decline in death sen­tences. That decline was a major fac­tor in Virginia becom­ing the first south­ern state to abol­ish the death…

The North Carolina state bar has sus­pend­ed the law license of a lawyer whose preda­to­ry rep­re­sen­ta­tion of two intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled death-row exonerees defraud­ed them of hun­dreds of thou­sands of…

The Georgia Supreme Court is con­sid­er­ing a chal­lenge to the unique­ly high bur­den of proof the state impos­es on cap­i­tal defen­dants and death-row pris­on­ers to deter­mine whether they are inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. On March 23, 2021, the court heard argu­ment in a case brought by Rodney Young, a death-row pris­on­er who asserts that Georgia’s harsh stan­dard uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sub­jects defen­dants with intel­lec­tu­al disability…

Describing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as an ​“inher­ent­ly flawed” and ​“abhor­rent prac­tice,” United Nations human rights experts have called on President Joe Biden to take action to end the death penal­ty in the…

Saying “[t]here is no place today for the death penal­ty in this com­mon­wealth, in the South, or in this nation,” Governor Ralph Northam (pic­tured) signed his­toric leg­is­la­tion mak­ing Virginia the 23^rd U.S. state and the first in the South to abol­ish capital…

The United States Supreme Court has grant­ed a Department of Justice request filed dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of President Donald Trump to review a fed­er­al appeals court deci­sion that over­turned the death sen­tences imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (pic­tured) for his role in the April 2013 Boston Marathon bomb­ing that killed three peo­ple and injured more than 250…

A group of busi­ness lead­ers have launched a cam­paign call­ing for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Virgin Group CEO Richard Branson (pic­tured) announced the ini­tia­tive at the vir­tu­al South By Southwest fes­ti­val on March 18, 2021, say­ing, ​“The death penal­ty is bro­ken beyond repair and plain­ly fails to deliv­er jus­tice by every rea­son­able mea­sure. It is marred by cru­el­ty, waste, inef­fec­tive­ness, dis­crim­i­na­tion and an unac­cept­able risk of error. … By speak­ing out at this crucial…

The move­ment to repeal cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Ohio has gained addi­tion­al steam as for­mer Governor Robert Taft and for­mer state attor­neys gen­er­al Jim Petro and Lee Fisher (pic­tured, left to right) called on the Ohio state leg­is­la­ture to end the state’s death…