Resources

This dashboard presents two decades of data on people serving life sentences in the United States. It draws from a national census of life imprisonment conducted approximately every four years between 2003 and 2024. The data were collected directly from corrections officials in all 50 states and the federal system. The growth of life sentences in the U.S. represents a major social and policy trend, yet comprehensive, nationwide statistics were not available until recently. The presentation of multiple years of data, along with key details about the population allows for the ability to observe and analyze how life and long-term sentences shape overall imprisonment trends.

This Amicus Brief was filed in the Supreme Court of the United States and coauthored with Duke Law’s Center for Criminal Justice and Responsibility. This brief urges the court to issue a issue an opinion reaffirming constitutional protections against gender-based jury discrimination.

This is the report from an independent analysis of the gunshot detection system’s use in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The report was commissioned by the City of Fayetteville to examine how ShotSpotter operated across three designated coverage zones from September 2023 through March 2025.

The evaluation reviewed data from 911 firearm-related calls for service, ShotSpotter’s internal “Ground Truth Tracking Workbook,” and Fayetteville’s public Open Data Portal. The study compared patterns before and after installation, both inside and outside ShotSpotter zones.

This dashboard offers unprecedented access to data on driver’s license suspensions across North Carolina related to unpaid court fines and missed court appearances. The dashboard is an interactive tool designed to help researchers, policymakers, and advocates understand how court debt contributes to long-term license suspensions in the state. 

By Nicholas Scurich, David Faigman, and Brandon L. Garrett.

Judicial limitations on forensic firearm identification testimony aim to prevent overstated conclusions declaring a definitive match (or “identification”) between bullets or cartridge cases and a specific firearm. The Maryland Supreme Court has ruled that examiners may state only that markings are “consistent with” those from a particular firearm. Another judicial ruling held that examiners may state only that the defendant’s firearm “cannot be excluded” as the source of the fired bullets or cartridge cases. These studies examined whether these limitations reduce juror conviction rates. The authors found “Consistent with” did not significantly reduce guilty verdicts compared with definitive identification testimony, suggesting that it may not effectively convey limitations to jurors. Courts may need more robust interventions to limit the persuasive power of forensic firearm identification testimony.

Involuntary civil commitment statutes codify the process of involuntary admission to a health care facility. Many statutes assign law enforcement to preside over custody and transportation during the commitment process, which can be traumatizing to people taken into custody. States and localities are seeking to develop alternative crisis response approaches that reduce law enforcement involvement. This study aimed to document variations in state laws pertaining to custody and transportation during involuntary civil commitment.

By Marvin S. Swartz, M.D., Megan Moore, J.D., Katie Lazar, B.A. in Psychiatric Services

A Toolkit for Organizers to Reform Forensic Evidence

This fact sheet describes how compensation for exonerees has evolved in the past several decades, including through successful litigation efforts and through the enactment of compensation legislation in thirty-nine states, Washington D.C., and by the federal government. It includes a table describing each of the state and federal statutes.

By Brandon L. Garrett, Richard E. Gutierrez, and Nicholas Scurich.

Firearms examiners, who seek to link fired ammunition to a particular gun, have testified in criminal trials for over a century. Research suggests that such evidence is highly persuasive to jurors. However, no studies have examined the effect of divergent conclusions offered by defense firearms examiners, nor have any explored the impact of testimony by research scientists—sometimes called “methods experts”—regarding the scientific foundation and limitations of the firearm examination discipline. The effect these types of testimony might have on jurors is, therefore, unknown. This article in Jurimetrics reports the results of a novel empirical study testing the effects of such defense experts. While most participants found the unrebutted testimony of a firearms examiner sufficient to convict the defendant, guilty verdicts were significantly reduced when the defense called an expert. Further, defense experts reduced the perceived likelihood that the defendant discharged the firearm, the strength of the prosecution’s case, the case-specific reliability of the firearm examination, and the general reliability of the firearm examination. However, critical differences existed between our various conditions involving defense expert testimony.

Brandon Garrett joined The Innocence Project in this amicus brief that argued that current scientific research demonstrates the unreliability of unduly suggestive eyewitness identification evidence admitted at Mr. Johnson’s trial.