Welcome to the Death Penalty Information Center’s website!

We knew that tran­si­tions could be dif­fi­cult — par­tic­u­lar­ly for those who had been using DPI’s old web­site for many years. So when we launched DPI’s new web­site in June 2019, we cre­at­ed this guide to help you find pages that had moved and to intro­duce you to new inter­ac­tive graph­ics and oth­er excit­ing fea­tures that we are now able to make avail­able to you.

Where can I find…?

Upcoming Executions: Under Executions” in the menu at the top and bot­tom of each page, click on Upcoming Executions.”

Execution Database: Under Executions” in the menu at the top and bot­tom of each page, click on Execution Database.”

Innocence (Exoneration) Database: Through the Innocence” page under Policy Issues” or direct­ly under Facts & Research” in the menu at the top and bot­tom of each page, click on Innocence Database.”

States with and with­out the death penal­ty: Under State & Federal Info,” click on State by State.”

Sentencing Information, includ­ing death sen­tences by year: Under Facts & Research” in the menu at the top and bot­tom of each page, click on Sentencing Data.”

DPI’s Fact Sheet (PDF): Next to the Donate” link at the top of each page, or at the very bot­tom of each page just above the Donate” button.

What are the categories at the top of the page?

When we upgrad­ed the web­site, we tried to make it a lit­tle sim­pler to find what you’re look­ing for by orga­niz­ing our major pages a bit dif­fer­ent­ly than on our old web­site. The main blue bar at the top of the page divides our major con­tent into five groups.

Policy Issues” refers to major top­ics of debate relat­ed to the death penal­ty, includ­ing arbi­trari­ness, costs, and inno­cence. The pages list­ed under Policy Issues” focus on explain­ing what those issues mean in the con­text of cap­i­tal punishment.

Facts & Research” includes top­ics that are less the­o­ret­i­cal and more spe­cif­ic. On the pages list­ed under Facts & Research,” you’ll often find tables, charts, and sta­tis­tics on things like mur­der rates or sen­tenc­ing. You’ll also find our page on the U.S. Supreme Court, and DPI’s Reports.

When you look at DPI Reports, you’ll find that we’ve sep­a­rat­ed our reports into Year End Reports (our annu­al review of death penal­ty events), In-Depth Reports, and Special Reports. In-Depth Reports are DPI’s long, thor­ough reports on major death-penal­ty issues. These include The 2% Death Penalty,” exam­in­ing geo­graph­ic arbi­trari­ness in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment; Behind the Curtain,” our report on secre­cy and the death penal­ty; and Smart on Crime,” cov­er­ing costs and law enforce­ment views on the death penal­ty. Special Reports are short­er, and typ­i­cal­ly address a spe­cif­ic event or ques­tion. These include DPI’s analy­sis of the caus­es of wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions and the 2017 spate of exe­cu­tions that were sched­uled in Arkansas.

Executions” has infor­ma­tion on sched­uled exe­cu­tions, past exe­cu­tions, and exe­cu­tion methods.

Death Row” pro­vides infor­ma­tion about peo­ple cur­rent­ly under a sen­tence of death or fac­ing cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings, includ­ing exam­i­na­tions of par­tic­u­lar groups of death-row pris­on­ers, such as women, Native Americans, and for­eign nationals.

State and Federal Info” has pages on each juris­dic­tion with­in the U.S. – all 50 states, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, and the mil­i­tary – and the juris­dic­tion’s poli­cies on the death penalty.

In the white bar at the very top of the page, you can click on About” to find infor­ma­tion about DPI, includ­ing our staff, con­tact infor­ma­tion, and press releas­es. For the Media” has infor­ma­tion for jour­nal­ists who want to sched­ule inter­views with our exec­u­tive direc­tor. Resources” pro­vides links to pub­li­ca­tions, pod­casts, and non-DPI web­sites on the death penal­ty, among oth­er items. You’ll find our high school and col­lege cur­ric­u­la under For Educators.” The top bar also con­tains our fact sheet, a link to donate to DPI, and links to our social media accounts. 
 

What new features are there, and how do I use them?

DPI now offers a vari­ety of inter­ac­tive graph­ics made with Tableau. Several pages already fea­ture these graph­ics, and we are devel­op­ing even more inter­ac­tive graph­ics to be added in the future. You can view and inter­act with these graph­ics on any device, but they are eas­i­est to use on a lap­top or desk­top computer.

Here are just two exam­ples. The State by State page has an inter­ac­tive map of the sta­tus of the death penal­ty in each state in the United States. (Click on State by State” under State & Federal Info” to view this graph­ic.) You can hov­er over a state to find out whether it has the death penal­ty, does­n’t have the death penal­ty, or has a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. You can select a year to see what state sta­tus­es were in that year. You can select a state or region to high­light that par­tic­u­lar geo­graph­i­cal area. You can select a year of abo­li­tion to see which states abol­ished the death penal­ty in that year.

On the Race page, you can find a pair of maps with pie charts over each U.S. state, show­ing the race of exe­cut­ed defen­dants and the race of mur­der vic­tims in the under­ly­ing crimes. (Click on Race” under Policy Issues” to view these graph­ics, or see below.) These maps also have a vari­ety of fil­ters that let users explore the data over time, exam­ine indi­vid­ual states and regions, or look at the data for par­tic­u­lar com­bi­na­tions of race of defen­dants and vic­tims.
 

If you’d like to see all of DPIC’s inter­ac­tive visu­al­iza­tions in one place, click on the word Tableau” at the bot­tom of any visu­al­iza­tion, then click on more by this author” in the box that pops up.

Another major new fea­ture you may notice is that some of our tables are inter­ac­tive. If you see that the col­umn titles in a table are under­lined, you can click on a title to sort the table by that col­umn. For instance, the table of women exe­cut­ed since 1976 can be sort­ed by date, name, race, state, and exe­cu­tion method.

What do you mean by…?

You may not be famil­iar with all of the legal terms used on DPIC’s web­site. Here are def­i­n­i­tions of a few key terms as they are used on our web­site, with links to rel­e­vant pages.

Capital Murder

Capital mur­der is mur­der for which the death penal­ty may be imposed.

Clemency

Clemency refers to the pow­er of a gov­er­nor or an offi­cial or board in the exec­u­tive branch to nul­li­fy a crim­i­nal con­vic­tion, to reduce a crim­i­nal sen­tence, or to delay an exe­cu­tion. The gov­er­nor usu­al­ly has the pow­er to grant clemen­cy, but an admin­is­tra­tive board takes part in mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to the gov­er­nor in many states.

Commutation

A com­mu­ta­tion is a reduc­tion in the sen­tence that has already been judi­cial­ly imposed. It is the most com­mon form of clemen­cy in cap­i­tal cas­es. The usu­al com­mu­ta­tion sought by defen­dants is the reduc­tion of the death sen­tence to life imprisonment.

Death Row

Death row is the term used for the prison or prison unit where death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers are incar­cer­at­ed. It is also often used in a more metaphor­i­cal sense. A pris­on­er may be on death row,” if he or she is sen­tenced to death, even if he or she is held in a sep­a­rate med­ical or psy­chi­atric facil­i­ty, rather than in the same unit as oth­er pris­on­ers who are sen­tenced to death. 

There are dif­fer­ent ways of count­ing who is on death row. One method includes only pris­on­ers with active death sen­tences that have not been over­turned in the courts. A sec­ond method counts all pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly under a sen­tence of death, includ­ing those whose death sen­tences have been reversed by a low­er court order that can still be chal­lenged on appeal. A third method counts all peo­ple who have been sen­tenced to death who face the pos­si­bil­i­ty of exe­cu­tion, includ­ing those with active death sen­tences, those whose con­vic­tions and death sen­tences have been over­turned in the courts but can be restored on appeal, and those who have over­turned their con­vic­tions or death death sen­tences but still face a retri­al or resen­tenc­ing in which the death penal­ty can be reimposed. 

Exoneration

Exoneration, from the Latin ex onus to unbur­den,” refers to the legal process of clear­ing some­one of a con­vic­tion. Someone who is exon­er­at­ed was once con­vict­ed of a crime, but has had all legal bur­den of that con­vic­tion removed. In order to be includ­ed on DPIC’s list of death-row exon­er­a­tions, a per­son who has been con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death must either receive a full par­don on grounds of inno­cence, or have his or her con­vic­tion over­turned and then either be acquit­ted or have all charges dropped or dismissed.

Life Without the Possibility of Parole (Commonly Known as LWOP)

Life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole is the harsh­est sen­tence avail­able in the American legal sys­tem, after the death penal­ty. A per­son sen­tenced to life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole will spend the rest of his or her life in prison, unless their con­vic­tion or sen­tence is reversed by a high­er court or the sen­tence is commuted.

Moratorium

A mora­to­ri­um is a tem­po­rary, for­mal halt to exe­cu­tions. It is most com­mon­ly imposed by a gov­er­nor, who states that no exe­cu­tions will be car­ried out dur­ing his or her term in office, but it can also be imposed by leg­is­la­tion. Governors who have halt­ed exe­cu­tions have raised con­cerns about bias in the use of the death penal­ty and have called on their states to fur­ther study and dis­cuss the issue.

Pardon

A par­don is a form of clemen­cy in which the exec­u­tive nul­li­fies the con­vic­tion and removes any remain­ing penal­ties. Death-row pris­on­ers who are giv­en full par­dons are includ­ed on DPIC’s Innocence List.

Reprieve

Reprieve is a form of clemen­cy that refers to tem­porar­i­ly delay­ing the exe­cu­tion of a death sen­tence or oth­er crim­i­nal sentence.

Stay of Execution

A stay of exe­cu­tion is an order by a court block­ing a state from car­ry­ing out an exe­cu­tion. Some stays are for a defined peri­od of time, so that the court can con­sid­er issues raised by the par­ties in a case. Other stays can halt an exe­cu­tion alto­geth­er. Stays issued by a low­er court are sub­ject to appeal. In those cas­es, an appeals court may reverse a low­er court’s order and allow the exe­cu­tion to pro­ceed as orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled. Other stays may result in an exe­cu­tion being resched­uled months or years lat­er, or may allow time for addi­tion­al appeals that reverse the prisoner’s death sen­tence entirely.