Death Penalty Information Center

In the August 2026 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI Racial Justice Storyteller Taylor Bonner speaks with Rafiah Muhammad-McCormick (pic­tured left), Director of Community Outreach for Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (TADP) and founder of Rodney’s Village, a vio­lence pre­ven­tion non-prof­it. A mur­der victim’s fam­i­ly mem­ber and com­mu­ni­...

A Knox County court is pre­sid­ing over a mul­ti-day evi­den­tiary hear­ing to deter­mine whether Tennessee’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col can be con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly used to exe­cute Christa Pike, the only woman on the state’s death row. Ms. Pike is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on September 30. The hear­ing, which began on August 11 and is expect­ed to last sev­er­al days, is b...

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 junk sci­ence: how flawed or over­stat­ed foren­sic evi­dence has con­tributed to wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions, and what hap­pens when the und...

The cas­es of eight men exe­cut­ed between 1986 and 1998 will be part of a Virginia State Crime Commission review into the prac­tices of Mary Jane Burton, a foren­sic sci­en­tist who alleged­ly mis­han­dled DNA evi­dence and gave inac­cu­rate tes­ti­mo­ny in court. The cas­es are among more than 7,000 cas­es linked to Ms. Burton that are being assessed after jour­nal­ist Tessa K...

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. **Why it mat­ters:** More than 100 cit­i­zens of oth­er coun­tries are under sen­tences of death in the United States, and in near­ly every report­ed case, arrest­ing author­...