Last week, the Delaware Supreme Court issued an order declaring that the state’s death penalty law was unconstitutional. This makes Delaware the 20th state (plus
“If putting him to death would bring my mama back, I’d want him dead. But that won’t happen, so what’s the point of killing him? I’m just trying to do the best I can and honor the memory of my mama. I believe in my heart she wouldn’t want this boy put to death.”
In Utah, legislators are planning to introduce a bill that would “fast-track” the death penalty appeals process to compete with a bill calling for repeal
Former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter. California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. Former California Attorney General John Van de Kamp. Former California Supreme Court Justice
Quin Denvir, a long-time criminal defense attorney — with significant stints as the State Public Defender and the Federal Defender for the Eastern District of California
“I have represented several death row inmates who were able to avoid execution, and I lost one, Tom Thompson. He was very likely innocent of capital murder, and his case has been chronicled by Judge Reinhardt as a miscarriage of justice.”
“I’m doing the best I can through letters,” Nancy remembers. “I just kept thinking that they’re going to figure out they’ve got the wrong guy. And Mom wrote that everything was going to be fine.”
“Enough of a flawed system that disproportionately targets minorities; that cannot prevent the killing of innocents; that doesn’t have any impact on crime rates, that
“When I got called into the office and was told I was going to try this case I was fired up. I was excited to be recognized . . . It was a promotion,”
The man President Trump has nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court seems disturbingly similar to the justice whose seat he will take.
Judicial override, mental illness, and lethal injection were just a few of the issues states were grappling with in the last few weeks in their death penalty debates.
Shakeel Syed helped found a Muslim-Latino Collaborative as a defense against the racism of the new Administration.
“I’m no bleeding heart. I worked in Dade County Homicide for 16 of my 30 years on the job, and saw it all….”
Whatever your view of the current political scene, President Trump’s nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court is not good news for the abolition movement. Together with his appointment of Alabama’s Senator Jeff Sessions to the position of U.S. Attorney General, Mr. Trump is making clear his intention to institute a ‘law and order’ policy. Though ‘law and order’ can have many
The verdict was not a surprise, but it did leave many wondering what would be achieved by executing a clearly disturbed young man.
California’s new lethal injection protocol was rejected by a state regulatory agency that cited several problems with the proposal.
The U.S. Supreme Court sent Florida’s death penalty scheme into turmoil with a ruling last January, and things have just gotten more complicated since.
From Denver, where the new district attorney says she will not pursue the death penalty in murder cases, to North Carolina, which just marked 10 years since its last execution, the death penalty and its viability is being debated throughout the country.