Publications & Testimony

According to October 2024 polling pro­duced by Gallup, sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment remains at a five-decade low in the United States. Overall, Gallup found 53% of Americans in favor of the death penal­ty, but that num­ber masks con­sid­er­able dif­fer­ences between old­er and younger Americans. More than half of young adults aged 18 to 43 now oppose the death penal­ty. Among those express­ing a polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion, sup­port for the death penal­ty fell marked­ly in all groups…

Melissa…

On Thursday, the Death Penalty Information Center (“DPI”) released a new report detail­ing the trou­bling racial his­to­ry of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. Fool’s Gold: How the Federal Death Penalty Has Perpetuated Racially Discriminatory Practices Throughout History doc­u­ments how racial dis­crim­i­na­tion has been a through­line in the appli­ca­tion of the fed­er­al death penal­ty since the 1800s. The report explains that, despite often being…

On November 6, 2024, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) vot­ed 6 – 3 to grant death-sen­­tenced pris­on­er Randy Halprin a new tri­al. The TCCA decid­ed that the orig­i­nal tri­al judge, Vickers Cunningham,​“was actu­al­ly biased against him at the time of tri­al because Halprin is Jewish.” The Court wrote in its rul­ing that the​“uncon­tra­dict­ed evi­dence,” includ­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from friends and fam­i­ly of Judge Cunningham regard­ing his use of deroga­to­ry and racial slurs…

Image of Erik and…

Thomas Creech and…

According to Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), October saw the high­est month­ly exe­cu­tion total in Iran since 2007, when the orga­ni­za­tion began doc­u­ment­ing exe­cu­tions. There were at least 166 exe­cu­tions last month, bring­ing the year­ly total to 651 exe­cu­tions over the past 10 months. Of the October exe­cu­tions iden­ti­fied by IHRNGO, only 12%, or 20 exe­cu­tions, were report­ed by offi­cial sources. Eleven Baluch and nine Kurdish peo­ple were among those executed.

As vot­ers across the United States cast their bal­lots on elec­tion day, the Death Penalty Information Center’s July 2024 report, Lethal Election: How the U.S. Electoral Process Increases the Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty, pro­vides valu­able con­text on the inter­sec­tion of pol­i­tics and the…

On November 4, 2024, the United States Supreme Courts released its order in the case of Hamm v. Smith, 604 U.S. ​​_​(2024). The peti­tion for cer­tio­rari, filed by the State of Alabama last year, involved a pris­on­er named Joseph Clifton Smith whose death sen­tence was vacat­ed in 2021 after a United States dis­trict court found he had intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Mr. Smith had tak­en five IQ tests, four of which placed his IQ in the low- to mid-70s, the range gen­er­al­ly accepted by…