While we’re on the subject . . .
June 14, 2019
In his New York Times column, “When We Kill: Everything You Think You Know About the Death Penalty is Wrong,” Nicholas Kristof cites cases (including Kevin
In his New York Times column, “When We Kill: Everything You Think You Know About the Death Penalty is Wrong,” Nicholas Kristof cites cases (including Kevin
Dear Supporters, A couple of years ago, campaigning with the New Hampshire Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, I met Republican State Sen. Kevin Avard,
Charles Ray Finch left North Carolina’s Greene Correctional Institution in a wheelchair last Thursday, 42 years after first being sentenced to death for a crime
Florida plans to kill Bobby Joe Long tomorrow for the murder of Michelle Sims in 1984, although he pleaded guilty to killing eight women and
(Tennessee is planning to execute Don Johnson tonight for the murder of his wife, Connie, in 1984. Johnson is a very different man from the
Douglas Stankewitz, the longest serving prisoner on California’s death row, was re-sentenced to life without parole last Friday. Stankewitz, who is 60, was sentenced to
It was the first death sentence a Georgia jury has delivered in five years, and it was handed down last week to a woman who
Seventeen years after the U.S. Supreme Court found in Atkins v. Virginia that executing intellectually disabled prisoners constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of
Five years after a statewide task force appointed to study Ohio’s death penalty released a report with 56 recommendations to improve the state’s deeply flawed
The U.S. Supreme Court late last month stayed the execution of Vernon Madison, less than an hour before it was to take place on January 25, and agreed to review his case. Madison was sent to Alabama’s death row 33 years ago after being convicted of killing Mobile police Cpl. Julius Schulte in April 1985. In their application for a stay, Madison’s lawyers from the Equal Justice Initiative argued that
Kevin Cooper has been on San Quentin’s death row for 33 years for a quadruple murder he didn’t commit. As we reported in the January Focus, the legions of people who believe in his innocence include Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge William A. Fletcher, former American Bar Association President Paulette Brown, at least 11 federal court judges, and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. We can now add the
Three states inched closer to repealing their death penalty laws this year. Washington, Utah, and New Hampshire have been debating repeal bills in the most recent legislative session, but so far, two have come up short, and one is still pending. In New Hampshire on Monday, the Senate will debate a bill that would repeal the death penalty and replace it with a sentence of life without parole. SB 593
In Ohio, Alva Campbell was found dead in his cell at Chillicothe Correctional Institution last Saturday, four months after he was removed from the state’s execution chamber because the execution team couldn’t find a viable vein in which to inject its lethal drugs. Campbell was 69. The Columbus Dispatch reports that a spokesperson for the Ohio Dept. of Rehabilitation and Correction said “there was no evidence of foul play and
In his article, “When Can You Buy a Gun, Vote, or Be Sentenced to Death? Science Suggests U.S. Should Revise Legal Age Limits”, in The Conversation, Temple University psychology professor Laurence Steinberg explains how recent research on adolescent psychological and brain development “provides a compelling basis for changing our laws” to “increasing the minimum age for purchasing firearms, lowering the voting age, and raising the age of eligibility for capital
The State of Michigan is the only state to have a death penalty ban in its constitution. That ban was enshrined 116 years after the state became the first English-speaking government to abolish capital punishment for murder and lesser crimes in 1846. The person responsible for making it part of the constitution? Eugene Wanger, author of Fighting the Death Penalty: A Fifty-Year Journey of Argument and Persuasion. The result is
February 14, 2018 The Honorable Edmund G. Brown Governor State of California State Capitol, Suite 1173 Sacramento, CA 95814 Dear Governor Brown, We write to urge that you act affirmatively on Kevin Cooper’s pending clemency petition. We are law school deans representing the University of California Berkeley School of Law, Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, Santa Clara School of Law, and the University of San Francisco School
A federal judge told Alabama prison officials on Tuesday to preserve all evidence related to last week’s botched execution of Doyle Lee Hamm, CNN reported. Chief U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre also ordered the corrections department to allow Hamm a full medical exam. The two-and-a-half hour ordeal last Thursday night was so botched it left Hamm “bruised, punctured, and limping from the attempted execution,” his attorney, Bernard Harcourt, wrote. What
Minutes before he was scheduled to be executed, Thomas Whitaker’s sentence was commuted to life without parole yesterday by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. In a statement, the governor cited several reasons for his decision. He noted that while Whitaker did not actually fire the gun that killed his mother and brother, and injured his father, he was sentenced to death while the actual gunman was not. He also cited the