Entries tagged with “Glynn Simmons”

Mar 09, 2026

What to Know: Costs and the Death Penalty

DPI’s​“What to Know” series exam­ines cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from mul­ti­ple angles, one top­ic at a time. Each install­ment pro­vides essen­tial facts and data on spe­cif­ic aspects of the death penal­ty. This install­ment looks at the costs asso­ci­at­ed with pur­suit of death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions. ***Why it mat­ters:*** The ques­tion at the heart of this issue is whether the assumed ben­e­fits of the death penal­ty are worth its costs and whether oth­er sys­tems might provide…

New Voices

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Religion

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Dec 04, 2025

When Conservative Principles Meet 48 Years of Injustice

Glynn Simmons keeps a copy of his death war­rant, signed by the Oklahoma gov­er­nor 50 years ago, order­ing his exe­cu­tion in the elec­tric chair. He was 22 years old at the time, con­vict­ed of a mur­der he did not com­mit. Forty-eight years lat­er, after becom­ing the longest-incar­­cer­at­ed wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed per­son in U.S. his­to­ry, Mr. Simmons’ sto­ry has become cen­tral to a grow­ing con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment ques­tion­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment — one that Nan Tolson is…

Issues

Aug 13, 2024

New Analysis: Innocent Death-Sentenced Prisoners Wait Longer than Ever for Exoneration

On July 1, after wait­ing 41 years for his name to be cleared, Larry Roberts became the 200th per­son exon­er­at­ed from death row. A new Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis finds that Mr. Roberts’ expe­ri­ence illus­trates a trou­bling trend: for inno­cent death-sen­­tenced pris­on­ers, the length of time between wrong­ful con­vic­tion and exon­er­a­tion is increas­ing. In the past twen­ty years, the aver­age length of time before exon­er­a­tion has rough­ly tripled, and 2024 has the…