Death Penalty Information Center
The Death Penalty Information Center or DPIC is a non-profit organization serving the media and the public with analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment. The Center was founded in 1990 and prepares reports, issues press releases, conducts briefings for journalists, and serves as a resource to those working on the death penalty.
The executive director of the DPIC is Richard Dieter.
Criticism
The DPIC is recognized as an anti-death penalty group [1], but it doesn't clarify is stance on capital punishment. According to the pro-death penalty prosecutor Steve Stewart, the DPIC is "probably the single most comprehensive and authoritative internet resource on the death penalty", but "this site makes absolutely no effort to present any pro-death penalty views, and liberally spreads propaganda and rhetoric on behalf of "the cause."[2]
The DPIC also has been criticized for its list of exonerated death row inmates by Ward A. Campbell, a supervising deputy state attorney general in Sacramento, California.[3]
Citation by the US Supreme Court
On, January 7, 2008, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in Baze v. Rees, a case challenging the three-drug cocktail used for many executions by lethal injection. The respondent's lawyer, Roy T. Englert, Jr., referred to the Death Penalty Information Center's list of "botched" executions. He criticized it because a majority of the executions on the list, according to respondent, "did not involve the infliction of pain, but were only delayed by technical problems (e.g., difficulty in finding a suitable vein)". [4][5] However, petitioners' lawyer disagreed.