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 suc­ceed. Rev. Dan Krutz, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Louisiana Interchurch Conference, read…

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.

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 like­ly to be sen­tenced to death.” The res­o­lu­tion high­lights racial inequities that occur at sev­er­al key…