Death Penalty Information Center

The Death Penalty Information Center (referred to in its own Wikipedia article by the abbreviation DPI) is a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1990, the organization focuses on disseminating studies and reports related to the death penalty, with an emphasis on how capital punishment is applied in the United States. The organization states that it does not take a formal position for or against the death penalty, but it is critical of how the punishment is administered, which has led some observers to describe it as an anti-death penalty organization. A pro-death penalty prosecutor is quoted as calling it "probably the single most comprehensive and authoritative internet resource on the death penalty" while noting it "makes absolutely no effort to present any pro-death penalty views." The organization's award-winning Educational Curriculum on the Death Penalty is described as including discussion of arguments on both sides of the issue.

In June 2022, on the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia, the organization released its Death Penalty Census, a database covering death sentences imposed in U.S. state, federal, and military courts from 1972 through January 1, 2021, described as the product of a years-long effort and intended for periodic updates.

Leadership has included founding executive director Michael A. Kroll, succeeded by Richard Dieter in 1992, followed by Robert Dunham (serving from March 2015 to January 2023) and Robin M. Maher, who took the role in May 2023. Board presidents have included David J. Bradford, George H. Kendall, and Phoebe C. Ellsworth (from 2024). Funding has come from American philanthropic foundations and, in 2009, from the European Union; the organization has also been ranked among Top Criminal Justice Nonprofits by Philanthropedia.

The organization produces an annual report on death penalty trends and statistics, as well as in-depth reports on topics such as arbitrariness, costs, innocence, and race, including a November 2018 report on lethal-injection secrecy and a September 2020 report on race and the death penalty, the latter described by the Associated Press as tracing a line from historical lynchings to modern state-ordered executions.

In 1993, the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary asked the organization to help identify risks of executing innocent people, leading to creation of its Innocence List, which as of February 1, 2023 documented 190 exonerations of individuals wrongly convicted and sentenced to death. A February 2021 special report analyzed causes and demographics of wrongful capital convictions. The list has drawn criticism, including from a National Review writer in 2002, for not distinguishing between factual innocence and convictions overturned on procedural grounds.

The organization also maintains a webpage on "botched" executions, drawing on research by Amherst College professor Austin Sarat identifying 276 such executions between 1890 and 2010, and listing 51 examples in the modern death-penalty era as of March 1, 2018. This list has been both cited and criticized in U.S. Supreme Court proceedings, including oral arguments in Baze v. Rees (2008) and the 2015 case Glossip v. Gross, in which the data was cited eight times across the majority and dissenting opinions.