On October 5, I testified before the Oklahoma House Judiciary (Criminal) Committee as part of Representative Kevin McDugle’s Interim Study on the Death Penalty. You can watch the entire committee hearing at this link.
Here is the written testimony I submitted to the Committee:
Representative McDugle, Members of the Committee: I want to thank the Committee for providing me this opportunity to speak with you to assist in your Interim Study on Oklahoma’s death penalty.
My name is Robert Dunham. I am the Director of the Death Penalty Policy Project and Special Counsel in the Philadelphia offices of Phillips Black, a non-profit public interest legal practice. I started the policy project just a few months ago after returning to Philadelphia following eight years as Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).[1] My goal today is not to tell you whether to keep or to replace the death penalty, but to serve as a resource and to provide you with information and a national perspective on issues that I believe are important to your consideration of this issue.
Much of the data I will be discussing today was compiled under my direction or updated by the Death Penalty Information Center while I was its executive director. However, to avoid any confusion, it is important to make clear that the opinions I am expressing today are my own and that of the Death Penalty Policy Project only. I am not and do not purport to be speaking on behalf of DPIC.
Representative McDugle has indicated that the Committee is particularly concerned about issues of innocence, and so I will focus most of my remarks today on that issue. I am, of course, happy to answer any questions that members of the committee may have at any time, either today or by later correspondence.
THE NATIONAL CONTEXT
The death penalty is in a period of historic decline across the United States. 2023 will be the ninth consecutive year in which there will have been 30 or fewer executions and 50 or fewer new death sentences, the fewest new death sentences imposed in any decade since states began re-enacting death penalty statutes in 1973 and the fewest executions carried out by states at any time since executions resumed in earnest in the 1980s. New death sentences are down by more than 85% since the mid-1990s. Executions have fallen by 75% since 1999.[2]
For perspective, states imposed more than 300 new death sentences per year for three consecutive years in the mid-1990s. That is an average of six death sentences each week; more than one death sentence every day in which courts were open.[3] There were 98 executions in the U.S. in 1999, an average of nearly two per week.[4] The trends related to death sentences and executions since 2020 unquestionably have been skewed by the coronavirus pandemic, with the numbers artificially low during the pandemic and artificially inflated in the pandemic’s wake. But even before the pandemic shut down most court systems across the country, the nation was on pace for near-historic lows in death sentences and executions and the numbers have remained near historic lows even as some states have restarted capital trials and resumed carrying out executions.
The decline of capital punishment has been especially pronounced in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic U.S. states and in the western U.S. With Virginia’s decision to replace the death penalty with llife without parole, a death-penalty free zome now stretches more than 1,300 miles from the Canadian border of Maine to the Cumberland Gap, where Virginia borders Kentucky and Tennessee. In the American West, Colorado and Washington have abolished the death penalty and California and Oregon have official moratoria on executions. After a blanket commutation by Governor Brown last December, Oregon joins Wyoming in having no one on its death row. Only one state west of Texas — Arizona — has executed anyone in more than a decade and executions in that state are on pause there while a special commissioner thoroughly reviews the state’s execution practices. And at the same time that executions have come to a virtual halt, every state in the West has either matched or broken its record for the fewest new death sentences imposed in a calendar year.[5]
The trends at the county level are equally dramatic. In 2013, DPIC’s analysis of U.S. death sentences revealed that fewer than 2% of all the counties in the United States accounted for more than 56% of the entire country’s death-row population.[6] Eighty percent of U.S. counties had no one on death row and 85% had not executed anyone in the modern era.[7] As of January 1, 2021, the use of the death penalty had narrowed even further: just 34 counties — fewer than 1.1% of all the counties in the U.S. — accounted for half of everyone on state death rows across the U.S. Two percent of U.S. counties accounted for 60.8% of all state death-row prisoners. 82.8% of U.S. counties did not have anyone on death row.[8]
The death sentences imposed in the last several years show that even these high-use counties are imposing the death penalty less frequently. In 2018, for the first time since the death penalty came back in the United States in 1973, no county in the U.S. imposed more than two death sentences.[9] Last year, again for the first time ever, no county imposed more than one.[10]
Yet, disturbingly, the decline in the number of death sentences and executions does not appear to have focused or narrowed its use to the worst of the worst cases and the worst of the worst offenders. Individuals who very likely were innocent, or were not the killer, or who were comparatively lesser participants in the murders for which they were sentenced to death have been executed. Further, the data shows that the vast majority of the prisoners put to death in the past five years — 82% of those executed — had significant mental, emotional, or cognitive impairments, suggesting that the most vulnerable, rather than the most morally culpable, are disproportionately likely to be executed.[11]
In 2018, at least 18 of the 25 prisoners executed (72%) had evidence of one or more of the following impairments: significant mental illness; brain injury, developmental brain damage, or an IQ in the intellectually disabled range; or chronic serious childhood trauma, neglect, and/or abuse.[12] The same was true of at least 19 of the 22 prisoners executed in 2019 (86%),[13] 16 of the 17 people put to death in 2020 (94%),[14] 10 of the 11 people executed in 2021 (91%),[15] and at least 13 of the 18 people executed in 2022 (72%).[16]
Public opinion polls also show that confidence in and support for the death penalty are at or near record lows. According to the Gallup organization, “support for capital punishment … has been trending downward since peaking at 80% in the mid-1990s during a high point in the violent crime rate.”[17] In 1994, Gallup reported support for the death penalty in the U.S. at 80% nationally. In October last year, Gallup found that support for capital punishment was down to 55%, one percentage point above the 50-year low of 54% in 2021. Forty-two percent of respondents told Gallup they oppose the death penalty, one percentage-point below 2021’s 50-year high.[18] A record high 60% percent of Americans told Gallup in October 2019 — the last time it asked the question —that life without possibility of parole is a “better penalty for murder” than the death penalty. Only 36% favored the death penalty.[19] And in 2018, for the first time since Gallup began asking the question in 2000, fewer than half of Americans said they believed the death penalty is applied fairly.[20]
We have seen similar patterns of declining support for the death penalty and increasing bipartisan concern about its administration here in Oklahoma.
In June 2014, a Tulsa World poll conducted by the non-partisan Sooner Poll reported that 74% of Oklahomans said they supported the death penalty.[21] By October 21, 2021, a public opinion poll by Cole Hargrave Snodgrass & Associates, released one day prior to the botched execution of John Grant, reported a 10-percentage-point drop, to 64%, in those expressing support for capital punishment.[22] However, Okahomans views on capital punishment are far more nuanced that a straight-up yes or no question reveals. A November 2015 Sooner Poll commissioned by News 9/News on 6 found that a majority of Oklahoma voters would favor replacing the death penalty with a combination of life without parole plus restitution, if that alternative were available. The gap between support for replacing the death penalty versus retaining it as is was more than 18 percentage points, with 52.4% of respondents favoring replacement and 34.0% favoring retention.[23] A January 2023 poll commissioned by Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty found that 52% of Oklahomans favored some form of a life sentence over the death penalty, with 36% favoring capital punishment.[24]
Polls also show significant support for a moratorium on executions in the state. A poll by The Oklahoman in October 2015 found that while 67% of Oklahomans said they supported the death penalty, half also favored a moratorium on carrying it out. The January poll, which others will talk about in greater detail, found that 78% of Oklahomans now support a moratorium on executions, with wide bipartisan support for an execution halt.
Finally, a national poll by the Justice Research Group in November 2021 provides additional evidence that should give us pause regarding the scheduled executions here in Oklahoma. The JRG poll found that bipartisan majorities of Americans oppose seeking and carrying out the death penalty against many of the types of individuals who are actually executed in the United States and who are the subjects of the execution dates in Oklahoma.[25] By margins of more than 30 percentage points, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike opposed the use of the death penalty against people with severe mental illness, brain damage, or intellectual impairments, and against veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder. The poll also found pluralities of each group opposed to seeking the death penalty against victims of severe abuse, and Americans nearly evenly split on the propriety of the death penalty for adolescent offenders between the ages of 18 and 21.
This is important because, according to research for DPIC’s Oklahoma report, many of the the 25 prisoners who were slated for execution are individuals who fall within these categories. Two who were severely mentally ill were allowed to represent themselves despite their mental disorders. At least five have brain damage. Others experienced severe trauma, received harsher sentences than less-culpable co-defendants, or had inadequate representation at trial. Without going into the details of all the cases, there is overwhelming evidence that Richard Glossip is innocent and that the judicial system and clemency process have failed in his case. Indeed, it is a miracle after nine execution dates that Mr. Glossip is still alive. In September 2015, he came within hours of being put to death and was spared only because Gov. Mary Fallin halted the execution when the Department of Corrections informed her at the last minute that it had obtained the wrong execution drug.
There are also serious issues regarding the guilt or innocence of Phillip Hancock, the next person scheduled for execution in the state. In his case, evidence that his jury never heard makes out a powerful case of self-defense.
OKLAHOMA’S OUTLIER PRACTICES
A moratorium is a pause, not an abolition, and against this historical backdrop, Oklahoma’s systemic death penalty practices should give us all pause.[26] The report of the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission detaials many of the issues, and I won’t go into detail on those. But it is important to understand that, even before the national decline in capital punishment, the state’s practices — and particularly the practices of its two largest counties — were (and remain) national outliers.
Oklahoma has imposed 419 death sentences and executed 122 people over the past fifty years.[27] It has the highest per capita execution rate in the country.[28] No county outside Texas has executed more people than Oklahoma County. Only one other county outside Texas has executed more people than Tulsa County. The original blistering schedule of 25 executions in 29 months sought to put 58% of death row to death in circumstances that almost certainly precluded meaningful judicial and clemency review.
As of DPIC’s publication of its 2022 Oklahoma report, Deeply Rooted: How Racial History Informs Oklahoma’s Death Penalty, Oklahoma County had imposed more death sentences and carried out more than 2.5 times as many executions as any other county its size (population between 750,000–1,000,000) in the United States. Tulsa County was tied with Montgomery County, Texas as the most prolific executioner of any county between 500,000–750,000 in size and had the second largest per capita execution rate at 2.6 per 100,000 population.
In 2001, I prepared a study of death rows is the 70 largest counties in U.S. death penalty states. Oklahoma County had the second highest per capita death row population, trailing only my home county of Philadelphia, and the third highest minority per capita death row population, trailing only Philadelphia and Hamilton County (Cincinnati). The county has a notorious history. It has imposed 156 death sentences and executed 46 people, accounting for approximately 38% of the state’s totals. Fifty-four people went to death row from the county during the 21-year tenure of Bob Macy as District Attorney from 1980 to 2001, including 23 convictions that relied upon testimony of police chemist Joyce Gilchrist, who was later found to have fabricated lab results and presented false testimony. After an FBI investigation in 2001 concluded that testimony she had provided had gone “beyond the acceptable limits of science,” an internal police investigation discovered that evidence in many of her major cases was missing, as was three years of her blood analysis files. By then, eleven of the people against whom she had testified had already been executed.
Cases tried during Macy’s administration are riddled with misconduct.[29] A 2016 report by Harvard’s Fair Punishment Project reported that courts had found misconduct in 33% of the death penalty cases he prosecuted.[30] An ongoing review of death-penalty reversals by the Death Penalty Information Center has found that eleven death sentences imposed in Oklahoma County have already been reversed because of misconduct or resulted in exonerations that implicated prosecutors in misconduct.[31]
Disturbingly, prosecutorial misconduct is a systemic problem. The DPIC Prosecutorial Accountability Project has identified more than 600 capital convictions or death sentences across the country overturned for misconduct, 30 of them in Oklahoma. That’s roughly 7% of all the death sentences imposed in the United States over the past half-century.[32] Other misconduct studies have shown that relief is granted in only about one-quarter of the cases in which misconduct is found, which would mean that about 30% of death sentences in the U.S. are affected in some manner by misconduct. The DPIC study has found that prosecutors in 14 Oklahoma counties have engaged in misconduct serious enough for a court to overturn capital convictions or death sentences or to exonerate death sentenced defendants. The 30 reversed death sentences represent 7.2% of all of the death sentences imposed in the state since the 1970s.
Moreover, the 30 misconduct reversals understates the prevalence of misconduct in Oklahoma death penalty cases because courts did not need to decide misconduct claims — or evidence of misconduct had not yet emerged — in the cases in which Oklahoma death sentences were reversed after the U.S. Supreme Court banned mandatory death sentences[33] or struck down the Oklahoma courts’ requirement that defense evidence must excuse the defendant’s crime before it may be considered as mitigating.[34]
In addition, there is the persistent issue of race. History shows us that the death penalty across the United States and here in Oklahoma has always been plagued by racial disparities, and you can read more about that in the Deeply Rooted report that I have submitted to the Committee. The law once explicitly favored the death penalty for crimes against white — but not other — victims and once made death available for offenses committed by individuals of African descent that were non-capital if committed by those of European ancestry. While that kind of discrimination is no longer permissible under the law, the disparities it authorized still persist in practice.
For example, the report for the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission found significant victim-based racial and gender disparities in Oklahoma’s application of the death penalty. The odds of that a death sentence would be imposed in Oklahoma were nearly ten times greater (9.59) if the victim was a white female as compared to cases with minority male victims. With a white male victim, the odds that a death sentence would be imposed more than tripled (3.22) than if the victim was a minority male.[35] Death sentences are much more likely to be imposed and carried out in cases with black defendants and white victims than white defendants and black victims.
We can’t erase the sins of the past; none of us is responsible for the sins of our forefathers. But, one hundred years after the Tulsa Race Massacre, a moratorium on executions offers us all an opportunity to pause, to reflect, to make corrections, to do better. It offers an opportunity for conciliation and healing.
THE ISSUE OF INNOCENCE
Everybody’s worst fear about capital punishment is that innocent people will be wrongfully convicted and executed. But it is no longer debatable that innocent people can and do get sentenced to death and some have been executed. The data — and the experience here in Oklahoma — raise serious questions as to whether we can trust our government institutions to accurately and reliably carry out the death penalty.
Here is what the numbers are telling us. Since 1973, at least 195 men and women who were wrongly convicted and sentenced to death have been exonerated.[36] That is one exoneration for every 8.1 executions — an astonishing failure rate. Some clearly innocent prisoners, like Carlos DeLuna, Rubin Cantu, and Cameron Todd Willingham, have been executed.[37] Every state believes that its state-court process is exceptional and has adopted safeguards that will prevent convicting the innocent. But over and over, people continue to be wrongly convicted and condemned in these jurisdictions.
In February 2021, DPIC published my Special Report: The Innocence Epidemic,[38] which examined the demographics and causes of the wrongful capital convictions. The data corroborate what all of us know in our hearts to be true — that government is incapable of eliminating the possibility that an innocent person will be sentenced to death and executed. At that time, we found exonerations from wrongful capital convictions and death sentences in 118 counties, spanning 29 states. The recent exoneration of Jesse Johnson in Oregon[39] raises that total to 30 states.
Wrongful capital convictions can occur anywhere, and they do — whether it’s Yellowstone, Montana; Bernalillo, New Mexico; Canyon, Idaho; or Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, Oklahoma City, Houston, or Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, the more we learn about what actually happens in these cases of wrongful capital convictions, the worse the problem gets. It is a truism that as long as the legal system involves humans, it is guaranteed to make mistakes. But what we found is that most innocent people who are wrongfully convicted and sent to death row don’t get there by mistake. The data from these 195 exonerations show that most wrongful capital convictions and death sentences are not merely accidental or the result of unintentional errors. Instead, they are overwhelmingly the product of official misconduct or the presentation of knowingly false testimony. More likely than not, they involve a combination of the two and the problem is worse when it comes to defendants from disfavored groups, such as communities of color.
Earlier, I noted that Oklahoma has the highest per capita execution rate in the country. That figure is even more disturbing given that it also has the most death row exonerations per capita of any state.
As of last month, when Glynn Simmons was released from prison after 48 years, eleven wrongfully convicted and condemned Oklahoma death row prisoners have been exonerated. Mr. Simmons — like prior Oklahoma County exoneree Clifford Bowen — was hundreds of miles away from the murder scene when the murder was committed. Indeed, at the time of the murder for which he was sent to death row, Mr. Simmons had never in his life even set foot in Oklahoma. But county prosecutors withheld evidence that their eyewitness to the crime had identified other individuals as the perpetrators of the murder and had not identified Mr. Simmons or his co-defendant, Don Roberts. Mr. Simmons and Mr. Roberts are not alive today because the system worked. They are alive only because the then-mandatory death penalty statute under which they were convicted was declared unconstitutional in 1977. The Oklahoma County District Attorney’s office has admitted that the exculpatory evidence it failed to disclose for decades required that Mr. Simmons’ conviction be vacated and that he be exonerated. The same should be the case for Mr. Roberts.
The six wrongful convictions that have led to death penalty exonerations in Oklahoma County are the second most of any county in the U.S. — tied with the larger counties of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Ohio. And that does not include Don Roberts or Richard Glossip or Julius Jones or others we don’t yet know about who have yet to be exonerated.
As I was going through exoneration data in preparation for this testimony, I wondered how Oklahoma county stacked up against the other large death penalty counties in my 2001 study. Knowing that there have been significant demographic changes over the course of the past twenty years, I ran comparisons based on 2001 U.S. census data and July 2022 U.S. census population estimates. Using either set of population figures, Oklahoma County had by far the highest per capita rate of wrongful capital convictions that had resulted in exonerations.
Based on the 2001 population data, Oklahoma County had nearly double the per capita death-row exoneration rate of any other of the 70 largest counties in states with the death penalty. (1.9 times greater than Pima County, Arizona). It had triple the per capita death-row exoneration rate of any other comparably sized county. (3.0 times greater than Jefferson County, Alabama.) It’s per capita exoneration rate was more than 10 times greater than the per capita death-row exoneration rate of the 70 counties as a whole (10.8).
I haven’t calculated the total population of those 70 counties as of 2022, but based on the July 2022 U.S. census population estimates for the large counties that had exonerations, Oklahoma County would still far and away be the worst in the nation. Using the 2022 population numbers, Oklahoma County’s per capita death penalty exoneration rate is more than one-and-one-half times that of any other of the 70 largest counties in states that had the death penalty in 2001. (1.6 times greater than Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Its per capita death-row exoneration rate is more than six times that of any other comparably sized county. (6.3 times greater than Hamilton County, Ohio. And its per capita death-row exoneration rate is 2.5 times that of any other county that was of comparable size in 2001 (Jefferson, Alabama).
According to the National Registry of Exonerations (as detailed in the table below), official misconduct and perjury or false accusation are the leading causes of the wrongful Oklahoma County capital convictions. The Death Penalty Information Center exoneration database lists official misconduct as a contributing cause of 8 of the 11 Oklahoma death penalty exonerations, followed most closely by perjury or false accusation (6 cases), and false or misleading forensic evidence (5 cases).[40]
It is widely acknowledged that any system that is run by human beings inevitably makes mistakes and that, despite our best efforts, innocent people will be sentenced to death. But my analysis of death-row exonerations for The Innocence Epidemic showed that innocent people are sentenced to death in most states and in every region of the country that authorizes capital punishment. They can be sentenced to death anywhere, but are most often wrongfully condemned in states and counties with a history of aggressive pursuit of the death penalty or that authorize outlier practices that make it easier to impose capital sanctions.
Now, you may ask, if the misconduct in Oklahoma was a long ago product of a prosecutorial administration that is no longer in office, why is that relevant to decisions we are making today about current and future cases?
First, it matters because even if almost every prosecutor is honest and acts honorably in ensuring that trials are fair, all it takes is one bad prosecutor to put an innocent person on death row. Second, capital cases take a long time to work their way through the courts. That is true both for executions and the even larger number of cases in which defendants come off death row after overturning their convictions or death sentences. But it is also true of exonerations, many of which take even longer because of the deliberate suppression of exculpatory evidence and the failure of courts to detect and acknowledge innocence during the course of ordinary appellate review.
The amount of time exonerations have taken has increased over time. Between 2011 and 2020, as cases tried in the 1990s, 1980s, and even 1970s continued to yield new exonerations, the average time between an exoneree’s initial death sentence and exoneration had lengthened to 22.6 years. That means that older cases involving as yet still unredressed claims of innocence are almost certainly still in the system
That is not a hypothetical statement. Since 2019 alone, there have been fourteen death-row prisoners whose exonerations have taken more than two decades, including four in which the exonerations took more than forty years.[41] And sadly, wrongful convictions that take decades to redress are almost always the result of successful efforts by government officials to suppress misconduct and evidence of false testimony or false accusations and to deny forensic testing that could potentially establish innocence or that a participant in a felony murder was not the actual killer.
Moreover, most exonerations are not examples of a delayed appeal process finally working. Most of these cases escaped detection in the normal course of court proceedings. Leon Brown and Henry McCollum[42] were exonerated in 2014, 30 years after their wrongful convictions in North Carolina, not through the courts, but as a result of an investigation by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission. Charles Finch[43] was exonerated after he had unsuccessfully exhausted the normal course of appeals, and he was only able to obtain relief because of the pro bono assistance a law school clinic. Clifford Williams, Christopher Williams, Walter Ogrod, and Glynn Simmons were exonerated only after newly elected prosecutors agreed to look into wrongful convictions obtained by distant predecesssors.[44]
But what if a prosecutor will not open the files from an older case in which a death-row prisoner asserts his or her innocence or if police or prosecutors have secreted exculpatory evidence in other files? Oklahoma has no mechanism to prevent miscarriages of justice in those circumstances. There are innocence cases that continue to escape detection and that create a continuing risk of wrongful executions. That is why, among other reforms, the legislature should establish an innocence review commission independent of the judicial process and state and local prosecutors. And that is, in addition to the reasons set forth by other witnesses today, another powerful reason to enact a moratorium on executions to evaluate and put in place workable remedies to address this problem.
Credits: The execution and sentencing trend graphics as well as those with the Death Penalty Information Center logo were prepared by the Death Penalty Information Center and used with permission. Per capita death penalty exoneration rate tables were prepared by the Death Penalty Policy Project. Table of Oklahoma County exonerations prepared by the Death Penalty Policy Project based upon information from the National Registry of Exonerations and the Death Penalty Information Center.
[1] The Death Penalty Information Center is a national non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. that serves the public by providing information and analysis on capital punishment.
[2] See Robert Dunham and Anne Holsinger, The Death Penalty in 2022: Year End Report, Death Penalty Information Center (Dec. 2022), https://dpic-cdn.org/production/documents/reports/year-end/Year-End-Report-2022.pdf; Death Penalty Information Center, Death Sentences in the United States Since 1973, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/sentencing-data/death-sentences-in-the-united-states-from-1977-by-state-and-by-year.
[3] It might be tempting to argue that the decline in death sentencing is attributable to the nationwide decline in homicide rates. However, as a 2017 study reported, murders in the 37 states that authorized the death penalty in 1994 declined by 35.4% between then and 2014, while death sentences fell by more than double that rate over the same time frame. See DPIC, Study Analyzes Causes of “Astonishing Plunge” in Death Sentences in the United States (Apr. 2, 2018), https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/7059. Moreover, while the murder rates were down per person, the U.S. population continued to grow in that 20-year period, meaning that death sentences per murder fell even further.
[4] See DPIC, Executions by Year, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions-year.
[5] Id.
[6] Richard C. Dieter, The 2% Death Penalty: How a Minority of Counties Produce Most Death Cases at Enormous Costs to All, Death Penalty Information Center (Oct. 2013), https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/TwoPercentReport.pdf.
[7] Id. at 1.
[8] DPIC, The DPIC Death Penalty Census: Key Findings, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/death-penalty-census/key-findings.
[9] Robert Dunham,The Death Penalty in 2018: Year End Report, Death Penalty Information Center (Dec. 2018), https://reports.deathpenaltyinfo.org/year-end/Year-End-Report-r2.f1590086609.pdf.
[10] DPIC 2022 Year End Report.
[11] At least 76 of the 93 individuals executed between 2018 and 2022 had significant mental, emotional, or cognitive impairments. See information reported in DPIC’s year end reports for 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/research-facts/reports.
[12] DPIC 2018 Year End Report.
[13] Robert Dunham and Anne Holsinger,The Death Penalty in 2019: Year End Report, Death Penalty Information Center (Dec. 2019), https://reports.deathpenaltyinfo.org/year-end/YearEndReport2019.pdf.
[14] Robert Dunham and Anne Holsinger,The Death Penalty in 2020: Year End Report, Death Penalty Information Center (Dec. 2020), https://dpic-cdn.org/production/documents/reports/year-end/YearEndReport2020.pdf.
[15] Robert Dunham and Anne Holsinger,The Death Penalty in 2021: Year End Report, Death Penalty Information Center (Dec. 2021), https://dpic-cdn.org/production/documents/reports/year-end/YearEndReport2021.pdf.
[16] DPIC 2022 Year End Report.
[17] Justin McCarthy, New Low of 49% in U.S. Say Death Penalty Applied Fairly, Gallup News (Oct. 22, 2018), https://news.gallup.com/poll/243794/new-low-say-death-penalty-applied-fairly.aspx.
[18] DPIC, Polls: Death Penalty Support Remains Near 50-Year Low Despite Record-High Perception that Crime Has Increased (Nov. 15, 2022), https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/polls-death-penalty-support-remains-near-50-year-low-despite-record-high-perception-that-crime-has-increased.
[19] DPIC, Gallup Poll — For First Time, Majority of Americans Prefer Life Sentence To Capital Punishment (Nov. 25, 2019), https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/gallup-poll-for-first-time-majority-of-americans-prefer-life-sentence-to-capital-punishment.
[20] Id.; see also DPIC, Gallup Poll—Fewer than Half of Americans, a New Low, Believe Death Penalty is Applied Fairly (Oct. 22, 2018), https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/Fewer_than_Half_of_Americans_Believe_Death_Penalty_Applied_Fairly.
[21] Cary Aspinwall and Ziva Branstetter, Most Oklahomans strongly favor death penalty, poll shows, Tulsa World (June 29, 2014), https://tulsaworld.com/news/government/most-oklahomans-strongly-favor-death-penalty-poll-shows/article_c7857930-a53c-553c-98c2-340411c48e04.html.
[22] DPIC, New Polls Show Support for Death Penalty Declining in Utah and Oklahoma (Nov. 8, 2021), https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/new-polls-show-support-for-death-penalty-declining-in-utah-and-oklahoma.
[23] WEB EXCLUSIVE POLL: More Oklahomans Oppose Death Penalty If Given Alternative, News9 (Nov. 18, 2015), http://www.news9.com/story/5e34beb4e0c96e774b347d39/web-exclusive-poll:-more-oklahomans-oppose-death-penalty-if-given-alternative; Graham Lee Brewer, New poll shows more than half of Oklahomans support life sentences over the death penalty, The Oklahoman (Nov. 20, 2015), https://web.archive.org/web/20200527220301/https://oklahoman.com/article/5461486/new-poll-shows-more-than-half-of-oklahomans-support-life-sentences-over-the-death-penalty.
[24] Feliz Romero, CONSERVATIVE LEADERS CALL FOR MORATORIUM ON DEATH PENALTY, CITE RECENT POLL, News9 (Feb. 22, 2023), https://www.news9.com/story/63f6d3f8b174e50a9ca6b6ae/conservative-leaders-call-for-moratorium-on-death-penalty-cite-recent-poll-.
[25] DPIC, New Poll Finds Bipartisan Opposition to Use of the Death Penalty as It is Actually Administered (March 1, 2022), https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/new-poll-finds-bipartisan-opposition-to-use-of-the-death-penalty-as-it-is-actually-administered.
[26] See generally Tiana Herring, Deeply Rooted: How Racial History Informs Oklahoma’s Death Penalty, Death Penalty Information Center (N. Ndulue & R. Dunham eds., Oct. 2022); DPIC, Ten Facts You Should Know About Oklahoma’s Death Penalty Administration, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/ten-facts-you-should-know-about-oklahomas-death-penalty-administration.
[27] See DPIC, Death Penalty Census Database (last visited Oct. 1, 2023), https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/database/sentences?jurisdiction=Oklahoma&sort=year/desc; DPIC, 2021 Death Sentences by Name, Race, and County, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/sentencing-data/death-sentences-by-year/2021-death-sentences-by-name-race-and-county; DPIC, 2022 Death Sentences by Name, Race, and County, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/sentencing-data/death-sentences-by-year/2022-death-sentences-by-name-race-and-county.
[28] DPIC, State Execution Rates (through 2020) (last visited Oct. 1, 2023), https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/state-execution-rates.
[29] DPIC, History of Misconduct Chronicled in Oklahoma County With 41 Executions (Nov. 5, 2015), https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/history-of-misconduct-chronicled-in-oklahoma-county-with-41-executions; Fair Punishment Project, America’s Top Five Deadliest Prosecutors: How Overzealous Personalities Drive the Death Penalty (June 30, 2016), https://files.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/FairPunishmentProject-Top5Report_FINAL_2016_06.pdf; Ed Pilkington, America’s deadliest prosecutors: five lawyers, 440 death sentences, The Guardian (June 30, 2016)., https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/29/us-deadliest-prosecutors-death-penalty-five-attorneys-justice-system.
[30] America’s Top Five Deadliest Prosecutors at 8.
[31] DPIC, Prosecutorial Accountability: Misconduct Reversals and Exonerations by County and State (last visited, Oct. 1, 2023), https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/prosecutorial-accountability/misconduct-reversals-and-exonerations-by-county-and-state.
[32] Id.
[33] Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280 (1976).
[34] Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104 (1982).
[35] Glenn L. Pierce, Michael L. Radelet, and Susan Sharp, Race and Death Sentencing for Oklahoma Homicides Committed Between 1990 and 2012, 107 J. Crim. Law & Criminology 733, 749 (Fall 2017).
[36] See DPIC, Innocence and the Death Penalty, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-and-death-penalty.
[37] See DPIC, Executed But Possibly Innocent, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executed-possibly-innocent. DPIC has not systematically documented the wrongful executions of likely innocent prisoners, but has found at least twenty instances in which prisoners have been put to death despite serious doubts as to their guilt. Others have placed the number significantly higher. See SAVE Innocents, Executed but innocent? (Web Archive from June 2015) (estimating that at least 40 people who may have been innocent have been executed), https://web.archive.org/web/20150619013058/www.save-innocents.com/executed-but-innocent.html.
[38] Robert Dunham et al., DPIC Special Report: The Innocence Epidemic, Death Penalty Information Center (Feb. 18, 2021), https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/dpic-reports/dpic-special-report-the-innocence-epidemic.
[39] National Registry of Exonerations, Jesse Johnson, https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=6655.
[40] DPIC Innocence Database, filtered for Oklahoma (last visited Oct. 1, 2023), https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/database/innocence?state=Oklahoma.
[41] In 2019, two former death row prisoners who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death more than 42 years earlier in 1976 were exonerated: Clifford Williams in Florida and Charles Ray Smith in North Carolina. Later that year, Christopher Williams was exonerated in Pennsylvania, 26 years after he was sentenced to death.
In 2020, Paul Browning, who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in Nevada in 1986 was exonerated after 34 years; Walter Ogrod and Roderick Johnson, who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in Pennsylvania in 1996 and 1997, respectively were exonerated; Curtis Flowers, who was tried six times for the same crime after multiple capital trials and mistrials and was sentenced to death in 1997 was exonerated in Mississippi; and Robert Dubose was exonerated from Florida’s death row 37 years after his wrongful conviction and death sentence in 1983.
In 2021, Barry Williams was exonerated in California 25 years after his wrongful conviction and death sentence in 1986; Eddie Lee Howard and Sherwood Brown were exonerated in Mississippi from wrongful convictions and death sentences imposed in 1994 and 1995, respectively.
In 2022, Marilyn Mulero was exonerated from a wrongful capital conviction and death sentence 29 years earlier in 1993.
And in 2023, former Maryland death-row prisoner John Huffington was pardoned from a 42-year-old wrongful capital conviction and Glynn Simmons, who was convicted and sentenced to death in Oklahoma in 1975, was exonerated after 48 years in prison.
See DPIC Innocence Database.
[42] DPIC, Former Death-Row Prisoners Freed In North Carolina (Oct. 22, 2023), https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/former-death-row-prisoners-freed-in-north-carolina.
[43] Rose Wong, Free after 43 years: How Duke’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic freed an innocent man, Duke Chronicle (June 20, 2019), https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2019/06/how-duke-university-wrongful-convictions-clinic-freed-an-innocent-man-law-school-james-coleman-jr.
[44] National Registry of Exonerations, Clifford Williams, Jr., https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=5533; Christopher Williams, https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=5669; Walter Ogrod, https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=5752; Glynn Simmons, https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=6668.