Testimony and Statements

Christian church leaders from Catholic and Protestant denominations across Louisiana have called upon state lawmakers to pass legislation to end the death penalty in the Bayou State. On April 25, 2019, the Louisiana Interchurch Conference and two dozen faith representatives held a press conference on the steps of the state capitol in Baton Rouge advocating for legislation to abolish the state’s capital punishment law and pledging their support for as long as it takes for abolition efforts to…

In the past few years, the governors of California, Pennsylvania, Washington, Colorado, and Oregon have put a halt to executions in their states because of problems in the death penalty system. Below are some of the reasons they gave for for their actions. Governor Gavin Newsom, California, March 13, 2019 “Our death penalty system has been, by all measures, a failure. It has discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, black and brown, or can’t afford expensive legal representation.

Judiciary Committee, Nebraska Unicameral Legislature: Testimony on LB 238 – A Bill Relating to Witnessing Executions by Robert Brett Dunham, Executive Director, Death Penalty Information Center (Lincoln, March 7, 2019)

Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety, New Hampshire House of Representatives: Testimony on HB 455 – Changing the penalty for capital murder to life imprisonment without the possibility for parole by Robert Brett Dunham, Executive Director, Death Penalty Information Center (Concord, February 19, 2019). Exhibits to Mr. Dunham’s testimony can be accessed here.

“The death penalty is dying in the United States, and Republicans are contributing to its demise,” concludes a new report, The Right Way, released on October 25 by the advocacy group Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. The report traces “the dramatic rise in Republican sponsorship of bills to end the death penalty” and the trends that it says helped contribute to this rise. Based on this data, the report says “[m]ore Republican lawmakers are recognizing that the death penalty is a…

Committee on Administration of Criminal Justice, Louisiana House of Representatives: Testimony on HB 101 – Eliminating the death penalty for offenses committed on or after August 1, 2017 by Robert Brett Dunham, Executive Director, Death Penalty Information Center (Baton Rouge, May 17, 2017)

Calling racial bias in the administration of the death penalty “an undisputed fact,” the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators (NHCSL), a group of 320 Hispanic legislators, has passed a resolution urging legislative action in all state and federal jurisdictions to repeal the death penalty across the United States. The legislators note that the criminal justice system subjects “Black, Latino, Native Americans, and all people of color” to more punitive treatment, including being “more…