Voices: Ron Briggs
October 17, 2016
“We actually thought at the time, naively, that a broader death penalty would deter criminals,” Briggs says. “We truly believed the bill would reduce crime in California.”
“We actually thought at the time, naively, that a broader death penalty would deter criminals,” Briggs says. “We truly believed the bill would reduce crime in California.”
Five counties in southern California have been handing down so many death sentences one death penalty expert has dubbed them the “new Death Belt.”
A federal appeals court ruled last week that Missouri must disclose the identities of the suppliers who provide it with the drugs used in its
The National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators passed a resolution last week calling for an end to the death penalty in the U.S. The 320-member
“In California, the death penalty system stopped working many years ago, but taxpayers continue to pay for it,” says Our Revolution, the recently formed political
Fourteen years ago, the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment issued a report recommending 85 reforms designed to minimize the possibility that an innocent person would
Angela Corey, the Florida State Attorney for the Fourth Judicial Circuit, whose jurisdiction included Duval County, which had the highest number of death sentences per
“I described to the jury how I had to tell my six-year old daughter that she would never see her daddy again. I told them about her putting a flower on the coffin, hugging his coffin. I pulled no punches, let me tell you. I made that jury understand how much pain I was in, how much pain my family was in. I was very persuasive.”
A man who was wrongfully convicted of murder in New Orleans, and served 18 years, 14 on death row, in Angola State Prison before being
Yesterday, the Washington supreme court acknowledged that the state’s death penalty scheme is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner and struck it down. The law lacks “fundamental fairness” the court said. African Americans make up 13 percent of the population, but they make up 42 percent of Washington’s death row — black defendants in Washington are four and a half times more likely than white defendants to receive a sentence of death,
Julius Jones was arrested in 1999 and sent to Oklahoma’s death row three years later for a carjacking murder it’s likely he didn’t commit. Now, for the first time in 19 years, there is reason to hope that justice will finally be done in his case. The U.S. Supreme Court said last week that it will review a petition filed last November by Jones’ lawyers. The petition is asking the
Tickets are still available for our event next Sunday, September 23, in Los Angeles, when we will honor the Reverend James Lawson, a civil rights icon whom Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called “The leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world,” with the Death Penalty Focus Lifetime Achievement Award. The Lifetime Achievement Award is in recognition of a person’s “lifelong dedication to civil rights, criminal and social justice, and the
“The Penalty,” the acclaimed documentary that goes behind the scenes of some of the biggest headlines in the recent history of America’s death penalty, will be premiering in several California cities at this month. The film documents a state’s scramble to develop a lethal injection protocol and an attorney desperate to prevent a “botched” and torturous execution; a man’s attempts to put his life back together after spending 15 years
The Washington Post this week reported on a study commissioned by the National Registry of Exonerations that found that since 1989, some 2,000 exonerees spent a combined 20 thousand years in prison. The report, which hasn’t been published yet — Washington Post reporter Radley Balko was given an advance copy — provides additional evidence of how pervasive racism is in our criminal justice system, but also reveals some surprising findings, including that:
A doctor who reviewed statements from witnesses to last month’s execution of Billy Ray Irick in Tennessee stated in court filings that their accounts indicate Irick “experienced the feeling of choking, drowning in his own fluids, suffocating, being buried alive, and the burning sensation caused by the injection of the potassium chloride.” The Tennessean reports that Dr. David Lubarsky also said that the witnesses’ statement made it clear that midazolam, the first
In New Hampshire, the Senate failed to override Gov. Chris Sununu’s veto of a death penalty repeal bill. The vote was 14-10, just short of the two-thirds majority needed. New Hampshire hasn’t executed anyone since 1939, and has only one person on death row. The bill would not have applied retroactively. New Hampshire is the only state in New England to still have the death penalty. A South Dakota man whose
In its editorial, “Gov. Brown Needs to Speed Up the Review Process for Death Row Inmate Kevin Cooper,” the LA TImes editorial board says that death row prisoner Kevin Cooper’s request for advanced DNA testing of evidence from the quadruple murder he was convicted of committing in San Bernardino County in 1985, as well as an innocence hearing, should be fast-tracked since Gov. Jerry Brown will be leaving office in
Nebraska executed its first prisoner in 21 years today. The state killed Carey Dean Moore with a four-drug lethal injection cocktail that included fentanyl – the first time that drug has ever been used in an execution in the U.S. The 60-year-old Moore was sentenced to death for the 1979 murder of two Omaha cab drivers, Reuel Van Ness and Maynard Helgeland. The Nebraska legislature abolished the death penalty in