INDEX

On June 29, 1972, the United States Supreme Court decided Furman v. Georgia, striking down all existing death penalty laws in the United States and ushering in the modern era of the U.S. death penalty. In the decades that followed—as jurisdictions revised their death-sentencing procedures in response to the Supreme Court’s rulings on capital punishment—thousands of people were sentenced to death.

The Death Penalty Census is DPIC’s effort to identify and document every death sentence imposed in the U.S. since Furman. The census captures more than 9,700 death sentences imposed between the Supreme Court’s issuance of the Furman ruling and January 1, 2021. These sentences were imposed in 1,280 counties across 40 states, as well as by the federal government and the U.S. Military.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States

A Death Penalty Information Center Analysis of 185 Death-Row Exonerations Shows Most Wrongful Convictions Are Not Merely Accidental.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Innocence

This is a report about the role of official misconduct in the conviction of innocent people. We
discuss cases that are listed in the National Registry of Exonerations, an ongoing online archive
that includes all known exonerations in the United States since 1989, 2,663 as of this writing.
This Report describes official misconduct in the first 2,400 exonerations in the Registry, those
posted by February 27, 2019

• Document type Academic report
• Themes list Innocence

Supreme Court rhetoric, scholarly discussion, blackletter law, and ethical rules have perpetuated a myth that individual rights protect the autonomy of defendants within the criminal legal system. To expose this myth, I examine six rights that the Court has enshrined as essential decision points for criminal defendants due to the rights’ purported expressive and consequential functions: (1) the right to self-representation; (2) the right to plead guilty; (3) the right to waive a jury; (4) the right to testify; (5) the right to waive appeals; and (6) the right to maintain innocence at a capital trial. I conclude that each of these rights fails to protect defendant autonomy.

I then argue that genuine displays of autonomy under the criminal legal system take the form of resistance to the law, legal advocates, and the legal system. Thus, the autonomy of criminal defendants occurs not because of law but in spite of it. As such, scholarly discussions of the personal autonomy of criminal defendants should focus not on rights and rules but on acts of resistance. The current autonomy rights discourse is harmful because it obscures the system’s defects by framing discussions around individual rights instead of structural limitations. This lends itself to solutions involving procedural tinkering to better actualize individual rights instead of radical structural reform or abolition. By obscuring these structural defects and stressing the system’s protective qualities, the autonomy rights discourse presents the system not only as legitimate, but as functional, and potentially even successful. As such, a new scholarly frame is warranted: autonomy as resistance to law and the legal system. By illuminating the ways in which autonomy in the criminal legal system resembles autonomy under the American institution of slavery, the autonomy as resistance frame exposes the need for radical structural change and facilitates a reimagining of the criminal legal system.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States

This Ratification Kit is designed for government decision-makers. It gives the procedure to ratify or accede to the Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, and arguments to convince target countries to endorse it. Governments are not likely to have an expert understanding of the Second Optional Protocol. This document may contain answers to government concerns that will be addressed to you during your lobbying action.

• Document type Lobbying
• Countries list Marshall Islands
• Available languages Kit de Ratificación - Islas MarshallKit de ratification - Îles Marshall

This Ratification Kit is designed for government decision-makers. It gives the procedure to ratify or accede to the Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, and arguments to convince target countries to endorse it. Governments are not likely to have an expert understanding of the Second Optional Protocol. This document may contain answers to government concerns that will be addressed to you during your lobbying action.

• Document type Lobbying
• Countries list Fiji
• Available languages Kit de Ratificación - FiyiKit de ratification - Fidji

This Ratification Kit is designed for government decision-makers. It gives the procedure to ratify or accede to the Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, and arguments to convince target countries to endorse it. Governments are not likely to have an expert understanding of the Second Optional Protocol. This document may contain answers to government concerns that will be addressed to you during your lobbying action.

• Document type Lobbying
• Countries list Burkina Faso
• Available languages Kit de Ratificación - Burkina FasoKit de ratification - Burkina Faso

This Ratification Kit is designed for government decision-makers. It gives the procedure to ratify or accede to the Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, and arguments to convince target countries to endorse it. Governments are not likely to have an expert understanding of the Second Optional Protocol. This document may contain answers to government concerns that will be addressed to you during your lobbying action.

• Document type Lobbying
• Countries list Guinea
• Available languages Kit de Ratificación - GuineaKit de ratification - Guinée

This Ratification Kit is designed for government decision-makers. It gives the procedure to ratify or accede to the Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, and arguments to convince target countries to endorse it. Governments are not likely to have an expert understanding of the Second Optional Protocol. This document may contain answers to government concerns that will be addressed to you during your lobbying action.

• Document type Lobbying
• Countries list Congo
• Available languages Kit de Ratificación - CongoKit de ratification - Congo

This Ratification Kit is designed for government decision-makers. It gives the procedure to ratify or accede to the Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, and arguments to convince target countries to endorse it. Governments are not likely to have an expert understanding of the Second Optional Protocol. This document may contain answers to government concerns that will be addressed to you during your lobbying action.

• Document type Lobbying
• Countries list Suriname
• Available languages Kit de Ratificación - SurinamKit de ratification - Suriname