Publications & Testimony

With two his­toric votes, the Virginia General Assembly has moved the com­mon­wealth to the cusp of becom­ing the first Southern state to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, approv­ing sep­a­rate bills that would end the state’s death penal­ty and resen­tence the two men on death row to life with­out parole. On February 3, 2021, the Virginia State Senate vot­ed along par­ty lines, 21 – 17, in favor of abol­ish­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Two days lat­er, three Republicans joined all but one Democrat in…

Lawyers for the daugh­ter of a man exe­cut­ed by Tennessee have asked a state appeals court to per­mit DNA test­ing that could prove his…

The Virginia Senate moved the com­mon­wealth one step clos­er to becom­ing the first Southern state to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, vot­ing 21 – 17 on February 3, 2021 to approve a bill that would end the state’s death penal­ty and resen­tence the two men on death row to life without…

The Federal Bureau of Prisons spent near­ly $4.7 mil­lion dol­lars on the first five exe­cu­tions car­ried out by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion in July and August 2020, accord­ing to redact­ed gov­ern­ment finan­cial records recent­ly obtained by the…

A major­i­ty of Ohioans sup­port repeal of the state’s death penal­ty, a new­ly released statewide poll…

Despite being under fed­er­al court order to under­take pro­tec­tive mea­sures against the spread of COVID-19, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) took no action after being alert­ed that two reporters who had been media wit­ness­es to the fed­er­al exe­cu­tions at the Federal Correctional Complex at Terre Haute, Indiana in January 2021 had contracted…

Throughout January, DPIC ran an 11-part info­graph­ic series look­ing back on The Death Penalty in 2020. The graph­ics cov­ered sub­jects includ­ing sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion trends, death-penal­ty repeal, exon­er­a­tions, prob­lem­at­ic exe­cu­tions, the elec­tion of reform pros­e­cu­tors, and the fed­er­al exe­cu­tion spree, among oth­ers. You can see the entire series on the Death Penalty Information Center Facebook page at this…

From July 14, 2020 through January 16, 2021, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment exe­cut­ed thir­teen pris­on­ers. It was the most con­sec­u­tive exe­cu­tions by a sin­gle juris­dic­tion since the U.S. death penal­ty resumed in the 1970s and the longest peri­od of time in which an exe­cu­tion spree by any gov­ern­ment went unabat­ed while no oth­er juris­dic­tion executed…

Developments in three fed­er­al cap­i­tal cas­es at the tran­si­tion between pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tions illus­trate the choic­es that the new Biden Department of Justice will face in for­mu­lat­ing its pol­i­cy on the fed­er­al death penal­ty. The cas­es, each at a crit­i­cal turn­ing point in deter­min­ing whether to move for­ward in a poten­tial­ly cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion, will shed light on the strength of the DOJ leadership’s com­mit­ment to imple­ment­ing the president’s pledge to end the fed­er­al death…