Publications & Testimony

The sin­gle most com­mon out­come for a death sen­tence in the mod­ern era is for it to be reversed on appeal due to a con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tion. Most peo­ple whose sen­tences are reversed get resen­tenced to life in prison or less, but some pros­e­cu­tors per­sist in seek­ing new death sen­tences even after mul­ti­ple rever­sals. A Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis of the 14 peo­ple sen­tenced to death four or more times for the same crime finds that prosecutorial…

In com­mem­o­ra­tion of the 20^th anniver­sary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s land­mark deci­sion end­ing the juve­nile death penal­ty, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) today released a new report: Immature Minds in a​“Maturing Society”: Roper v. Simmons at 20, detail­ing grow­ing sup­port that indi­vid­u­als ages 18, 19, and 20 should receive the same age-appro­pri­ate con­sid­er­a­tions that juve­niles now receive in death penal­ty cas­es. > [T]here is no bright line regarding…

To com­mem­o­rate the 20^th anniver­sary of the United States Supreme Court deci­sion that end­ed the juve­nile death penal­ty, DPI will release a report exam­in­ing the lega­cy of this deci­sion and its impli­ca­tions for emerg­ing adults. This arti­cle exam­ines one area of focus in the report: recent state courts deci­sions that have extend­ed legal pro­tec­tions to emerg­ing adults ages 18 to 20. In 2012, in Miller v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court empha­sized that​“youth matters”…

On April 1, 2025, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced she has direct­ed act­ing U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, Matthew Podolsky, to seek the death penal­ty against Luigi Mangione for the 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. This is the first time AG Bondi has direct­ed pros­e­cu­tors to seek the death penal­ty since President Donald Trump assumed office in January 2025, when he issued an exec­u­tive order includ­ing a call to​“restore” the fed­er­al death penal­ty. In a…

This month marks the 20^th anniver­sary of the land­mark U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion in Roper v. Simmons. In a series of posts antic­i­pat­ing the April 2025 release of DPI’s report com­mem­o­rat­ing the 20^th Anniversary of the Roper deci­sion and its impli­ca­tions for emerg­ing adults , we are explor­ing sci­en­tif­ic and legal devel­op­ments relat­ed to juve­niles and emerg­ing adults in the death penal­ty sys­tem. Adverse child­hood expe­ri­ences (ACEs) refer to potentially…

As clos­ing argu­ments of his tri­al began in Johnston County, North Carolina, Hasson Bacote watched as Assistant District Attorney Gregory Butler urged the jury to sen­tence him to death. Mr. Bacote, a Black man, had been con­vict­ed of fatal­ly shoot­ing 18-year-old Anthony Surles dur­ing a rob­bery when Mr. Bacote was just 21 years old. Mr. Bacote admit­ted he had fired a sin­gle shot out of a trail­er, but said he did not know that he hit any­one.​“Hasson Bacote is a thug: cold-blooded…