In Brief: August 2018
August 10, 2018
In St. Louis, six civil rights organizations filed an amicii brief with the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals last week on behalf of Charles Rhines
In St. Louis, six civil rights organizations filed an amicii brief with the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals last week on behalf of Charles Rhines
In his book, Making Habeas Work: A Legal History, Eric Freedman analyzes how essential the writ of habeas corpus is to a free society, going back
On Sunday, September 23, in Los Angeles, Death Penalty Focus will honor the Reverend James Lawson, a civil rights icon whom Dr. Martin Luther King,
From the team behind the award-winning One For Ten comes a feature documentary to lift the lid on the human cost of the death penalty
A state commission appointed to study Pennsylvania’s death penalty system released its report late last month, almost five years after its original deadline. The 280-page
Two-and-a-half years ago, Kevin Cooper’s lawyer, Norman Hile, submitted to Governor Jerry Brown a 235-page clemency petition, pleading for advanced DNA testing of evidence from
In terms of the criminal justice system, it can be argued that the most important locally elected official is the district attorney. So, in last
Next Tuesday, 34-year-old Christopher Young is scheduled to be executed in Texas for the 2004 murder of a 55-year-old convenience store owner. Exactly three months
Last Friday, Japan executed doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara and his six followers, who had been sentenced to death for the sarin gas attack on
In California, a 22-year-old man who pleaded guilty to a fatal shooting at a San Diego synagogue in April 2019 will be sentenced to life in prison without parole next month. CBS News reports that John T. Earnest agreed to plead guilty to opening fire at Chabad of Poway during Passover services, killing 60-year-old Lori Gilbert-Kaye, and wounding three others, in exchange for avoiding a possible death sentence. The agreement had
Support for the death penalty declined to 60% from 2020 when 65% were in favor, although a majority of Americans still support capital punishment “despite widespread doubts about its administration, fairness, and whether it deters serious crimes,” according to a recent Pew Research poll. According to the poll, released in June, 60% favor capital punishment for people convicted of murder, with 39% opposed. Surprisingly, 78% say there is some risk
“Everyone has a breaking point. Anyone can be convinced to confess, to lie. And it’s not only that they can but they do it at great risk to their future. It’s deeply fascinating and deeply troubling. The idea that someone would give a false confession is so counterintuitive, it fascinates me intellectually,” according to Richard A. Leo, a Professor of Law and Psychology at University of San Francisco’s School of Law.
It’s called the Golden Rule argument because it’s used by prosecutors to put jurors in the shoes of the victim. And according to Pepperdine Caruso School of Law Professor H. Mitchell Caldwell and recent Pepperdine Law School graduate Allison Mather, writing in the Regent University Law Review (behind a paywall), “Such arguments are nearly universally prohibited because they replace rational and deliberative decision-making with a blatant appeal to jurors’ emotions.” The lone
“I now believe that the death penalty should absolutely not be a punishment delivered by the state of Florida or for that matter, any place in the US or the world,” now-deceased former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerald Kogan says in his last known interview. Kogan says he became a death penalty opponent when “I began realizing that we’re executing people who probably are innocent.” It was a realization that came
Donna Doolin Larsen is tired. She hasn’t rested since 1995, when she, her mother-in-law, and her then 22-year-old son Keith walked out of her doctor’s office in Fresno, where he had driven her for knee surgery, and were greeted by police and FBI agents. They arrested Keith on the spot, on charges that he had killed two women and shot four others, all sex workers, from November 1994 through September
In his new book, A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays, Marc Bookman, the co-founder and executive director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, and a death penalty lawyer and writer, focuses on d As Bookman explains in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, “These cases seem absolutely absurd — but people should not come away thinking these are 12 outrageous, crazy, beyond-the-pale cases. What’s important about these is
In Virginia, there is no death row anymore. The Virginia Mercury reports that last weekend, prison officials announced the last two prisoners facing death sentences were sentenced to life without parole and moved to different facilities, leaving death row empty. Virginia officially abolished the death penalty in March. In Ohio, the Death Penalty Information Center reports that David Braden became the first prisoner in the nation taken off death row because of
“The first half of 2021 spotlighted two continuing death-penalty trends in the United States. On one hand, the continuing erosion of capital punishment in law and practice across the country; on the other hand, the extreme and often lawless conduct of the few jurisdictions that have attempted to carry out executions this year,” the Death Penalty Information Center reported last week in its 2021 Mid-Year Review. The stark difference between