Publications & Testimony

In this new series, the Death Penalty Information Center will occa­sion­al­ly high­light stu­dent works on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, includ­ing master’s and PhD the­ses, and law review…

On August 21, 2024, Marcellus Williams (pic­tured), who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on September 24, 2024, agreed to enter an Alford plea in exchange for a sen­tence of life with­out parole. This agree­ment would have ensured that Mr. Williams, who has always main­tained his inno­cence in the 1998 mur­der of Felicia Gayle, would not be exe­cut­ed. But hours after Judge Bruce F. Hilton accept­ed the plea agree­ment, Attorney General Andrew Bailey asked the Missouri Supreme Court to block the deal,…

On August 14, the Associated Press report­ed that the city of Edmond, Oklahoma agreed to pay $7.15 mil­lion to Glynn Simmons, the longest-incar­cer­at­ed inno­cent per­son in the United States. Mr. Simmons spent 48 years in prison, includ­ing two years on death row, before he was released last July. Mr. Simmons was offi­cial­ly exon­er­at­ed by a judge in December 2023 and received $175,000 from the state of Oklahoma, the max­i­mum amount allowed for wrong­ful con­vic­tions under state law. Officials…

An analy­sis from The Appeal of more than two dozen cas­es in which LGBTQ+ defen­dants faced the death penal­ty found evi­dence that anti-LGBTQ+ bias affect­ed case out­comes. After an exam­i­na­tion of media reports, aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nals, and legal doc­u­ments, The Appeal deter­mined that these cas­es are like­ly a sig­nif­i­cant under­count of the num­ber of LGBTQ+ peo­ple sen­tenced to death. ​“These cap­i­tal cas­es illus­trate the ingrained anti-LGBTQ+ bias endem­ic to the U.S. legal sys­tem — from sodomy…

In an August 14, 2024 op-ed in The Kansas City Star, Carolyn McGinn, a Kansas State Senate Republican rep­re­sent­ing District 31, and Kelson Bohnet, a cap­i­tal pub­lic defend­er and board mem­ber for the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, argue that the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem has failed, empha­siz­ing its cost­li­ness, lack of deter­rent effect, and inher­ent risk of ​“irrepara­ble harm,” and call for abo­li­tion dur­ing the next legislative…

Theodore B. Olson, for­mer U.S. Solicitor General from 2001 to 2004, who lost his wife in the September 11^th ter­ror attacks, says he felt relief upon hear­ing the announce­ment that three of the defen­dants entered into an agree­ment to plead guilty in exchange for removal of the death penal­ty as a sen­tenc­ing option. However, Mr. Olson writes that his relief was short-lived when with­in 48 hours of the announce­ment Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin revoked the plea agree­ment. Mr. Olson believes this…

On August 7, 2024, Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board vot­ed 3 – 2 to rec­om­mend clemen­cy for 52-year-old Emmanuel Littlejohn, who is cur­rent­ly sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on September 26. The final deci­sion to grant clemen­cy, reduc­ing Mr. Littlejohn’s death sen­tence to life with­out parole, rests with Governor Kevin Stitt, who has only grant­ed clemen­cy once during his…

On July 29, 2024, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the state’s first exe­cu­tion war­rant of 2024, sched­ul­ing an exe­cu­tion date for Loran Cole (pic­tured) in just thir­ty days, on August 29, 2024. Mr. Cole’s exe­cu­tion war­rant comes near­ly ten months after Florida’s last exe­cu­tion, which was the last of the state’s six exe­cu­tions car­ried out in 2023. Mr. Cole was sen­tenced to death in 1995 for the mur­der of a Florida State University stu­dent in Marion County, Florida. Following the issuance of…

On July 1, after wait­ing 41 years for his name to be cleared, Larry Roberts became the 200^th per­son exon­er­at­ed from death row. A new Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis finds that Mr. Roberts’ expe­ri­ence illus­trates a trou­bling trend: for inno­cent death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers, the length of time between wrong­ful con­vic­tion and exon­er­a­tion is increas­ing. In the past twen­ty years, the aver­age length of time before exon­er­a­tion has rough­ly tripled, and 2024 has the high­est-ever average wait…

In the sec­ond and third videos of The New York Times’ three-part series, ​“The Fallibility of Justice,” Brett Malone, whose mother’s killer remains on Louisiana death row, and Texas death-sen­tenced pris­on­er Charles Don Flores pro­vide their per­spec­tives on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The New York Times has con­sis­tent­ly called for abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, describ­ing it as ​“full of bias and error, moral­ly abhor­rent, [and] futile in deterring crime.”…