One year after the legislature abolished the death penalty, Nebraska voters will decide whether to reinstate it; while in Oklahoma, voters will decide whether they want their death penalty scheme enshrined in the constitution.
Capital punishment was at the center of debates in states including Kansas, Florida, Georgia, and Alabama the past few weeks.
“You know it’s hard every day sitting in a courtroom knowing you’re totally innocent,” Graham says. “I was framed because of my beliefs and because I was outspoken about prison conditions.”
The case of Caryl Chessman reverberated throughout the US and around the world, as California’s 12-year battle to execute him was fought in the courts and in the media.
The UN releases a new book on the death penalty, and again calls for worldwide abolition.
States around the country continue to tinker with the “machinery of death.” Here are a few of the more interesting developments around the country in the past few weeks.
Support for the death penalty is the lowest it’s been in more than 40 years.
As the cost of executions rises, state officials are scrambling to find the money to pay for them.
Newspapers are unanimous in their endorsement of Prop 62 and the repeal of California’s death penalty.
Alabama will no longer give judges the final say in whether a defendant is sentenced to death; that responsibility will lie with the jury.
The proposition “threatens to deal a mortal blow” to California’s courts, according to several legal organizations.
A report published today by Harvard’s Fair Punishment Project says the eight men Arkansas plans to execute, two a day, over a 10-day span next month all either have mental illness, are intellectually disabled, or had inadequate legal representation.
The U.S. Supreme Court has made two significant rulings in death penalty cases in just the past month. One centered on intellectual disability, the other racism. Both cases were out of Texas.
One of Rotary’s stated purposes is “to provide humanitarian services.” So why did Arkansas, which plans to execute eight inmates over ten days next month, ask its local Rotary Club to be citizen witnesses?
A newly-elected State Attorney in Orange-Osceola County announced today that she will not seek the death penalty in any case under her jurisdiction. The Orlando Sentinel reports that Aramis Ayala said death penalty prosecutions are “not in the best interest of the community or the best interest of justice.” Ayala’s announcement comes on the heels of new legislation just signed into law by the governor that requires a unanimous jury
San Quentin State Prison will no longer place death row inmates in solitary confinement indefinitely, thanks to a lawsuit filed by an Oakland attorney on behalf of six inmates.
A “rush to execute” sends shock waves throughout the United States.