Drew Havens
May 9, 2024
Drew Havens is a Deputy Federal Public Defender in the Central District of California based in Los Angeles, where he represents indigent clients facing federal
Drew Havens is a Deputy Federal Public Defender in the Central District of California based in Los Angeles, where he represents indigent clients facing federal
Alex Ketley is an independent choreographer, filmmaker, and the director of The Foundry. Formerly a classical dancer with the San Francisco Ballet, he left the company The Foundry as a platform to explore his interests in alternative methods of devising performance.
Sherry Frumkin has been combining her passion for art and social justice for nearly three decades.
Most children dream of a profession. Few, unlike Charles Windon, however, actually realize that dream. On a routine day like any other, while in the
Over a ten year career at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Emily Caesar has managed large scale program and policy development, implementation, and evaluation projects centered on a variety of issues including obesity prevention, cannabis regulation, oil and gas policy, and substance use treatment and prevention. Since 2014, Emily has volunteered as a core leader with Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, Southern California, working alongside other leaders and coalition partners to transform the criminal legal system at the state and local levels. Emily holds a BA in Psychology from UC Berkeley and a dual Master’s in Social Work and Public Health from Washington University in St. Louis.
Toni Trucks comes from a strong and varied acting background with roots in the theatre. Toni spent her early career in New York before making
Ed Redlich is currently a television writer/producer working for Paramount Television. He was an Executive Producer on “Without a Trace,” “Felicity” and as a Producer on “The Practice.”
Born and raised in Bogue Chitto, Mississippi, Lawanda moved to California and became an Investigator with the Santa Barbara County Public Defender’s Office. She was the first African American woman in California to earn the title of Chief Investigator, and she served in this role from 1995 until she retired in 2016. She is a founding member of the Defense Investigator Training Accreditation Academy, currently serves on the Executive Board of the Democratic Club of Santa Maria Valley, and is the President the Santa Maria/Lompoc National Association of Colored People, among many other affiliations.
Linda Fox has been an advocate of death penalty abolition for more than three decades. Now retired, she is a former Research Librarian at the California Appellate Project, where she aided in post-conviction appeals for people on death row. In addition to her work with DPF, Linda also organizes around a number of cases of people in prison for crimes they did not commit.
Richard Wollack is a real estate investment manager for institutional and individual investors for over 35 years. He also founded Premier Pacific Vineyards, the largest developer of high-end vineyards in California and owns two wine brands: Expression and Tetra.
Timberman founded her Sony Pictures Television-based production company, 25C Productions (now Timberman/Beverly Productions) in 2003. Timberman (along with partner Carl Beverly) is currently in production on the A&E drama pilot DANNY FRICKE, written by Cynthia Cidre and directed by Michael Dinner. Timberman/Beverly recently produced the Fox comedy pilot “Hackett,” starring Donal Logue and directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. In 2006, 25C and Sony produced the critically acclaimed NBC series, “Kidnapped.”
Sarah Sanger is an associate attorney with Sanger Swysen & Dunkle in Santa Barbara. She works on criminal defense matters in both the state and federal courts primarily involving capital cases. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law where she did graduate work in philosophy while obtaining her law degree. She clerked for the Office of the State Public Defender in Oakland, working on capital cases, and for the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office.
As Vice President, Development, for Public Counsel, Tracy Rice continues her long history of passionate work for civil rights and social justice. Prior to joining Public Counsel, Tracy served as Los Angeles Bureau Chief of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and before that was a staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California for six years. There, she worked on a variety of civil rights cases, with a particular emphasis on criminal justice issues, including prison and jail conditions of confinement cases, police misconduct, and death penalty appeals.
Fr. Chris Ponnet is a pastor at the St. Camillus Center for Spiritual Care in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He also serves as the director of the Department of Spiritual Care at the LAC+USC Medical Center. As Host Pastor, he leads the grassroots abolition group Catholics Against the Death Penalty Southern California.
Robert M. Myers grew up in Northern Orange County when there were more orange trees than people. He graduated from Cal State Fullerton in 1972 and Loyola Law School in 1975. He wrote Santa Monica’s rent control law as staff attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and served as Santa Monica City Attorney from 1981-1992. He is a founding board member of DPF and currently represents two men on California’s death row.
Dr. Luskin continues to serve as Director of the Stanford Forgiveness Projects, an ongoing series of workshops and research projects that investigate the effectiveness of his forgiveness methods on a variety of populations. He currently serves as a Senior Consultant in Health Promotion at Stanford University and is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. He presents lectures, workshops, seminars and trainings on the importance, health benefits and training of forgiveness, stress management and emotional competence throughout the United States. He offers presentations and classes that range from one hour to ongoing weekly trainings.
Takehiko (Take) Kawame is one of Japan’s leading death penalty attorneys and represents a client on Japan’s death row pro bono. He is a member of the Death Penalty Abolition Committee and the Legal Counseling Committee of the Japan Federation of Bar Association. Take is very active in organizing symposia, writing op-eds, and researching the capital punishment systems in Japan and the United States. Take also founded an educational organization to hold public meetings, converse with correctional officers about regulations, and arrange international conventions for volunteers who help prisoners with information and visitations. He studied at Sophia University in Japan and was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley in 2016.
Philip Hansten is Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, where he still teaches a philosophy of science class.Philip Hansten is Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, where he still teaches a philosophy of science class. He is also involved in drug interaction research with colleagues at other universities. He became involved in the death penalty after consulting on lethal injection issues with abolition groups. After realizing there were no rational arguments to support the death penalty, he wrote the book, “Death Penalty Bullshit. Fifteen Absurd Claims of Death Penalty Proponents.” Hansten tries to use reason and rational thought in his scientific and death penalty work, but he had a lapse in rationality when he did a sprint triathlon to celebrate his 80th birthday.
Reiss Clauson-Wolf is a writer/producer from Philadelphia. He attended Germantown Friends School, and thus spent his formative years being schooled in the Quaker tradition of practiced nonviolence. He has written for CBS, MRC, and Hulu, among others.
Dan Kupetz is the Head of Entertainment Business and Legal Affairs at Range Media Partners, a Santa Monica-based management and production company. Dan has over 25 years of experience in the entertainment industry, including 15 years as EVP and Head of Business Affairs at CBS Studios.
Dan earned his BA in History from UC Berkeley; a Master’s degree in International Relations from Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies; and a law degree from UCLA School of Law.
His commitment to social justice work and death penalty abolition is influenced by the Jewish precept of tikkun olam (repairing the world), and inspired by his daughter Sophie’s work in indigent and capital defense, and his daughter Zoe’s work as a history teacher and activist.
Mark Kimber is the past-President of the Salinas Steinbeck Rotary Club, the founder of a travel agency in Salinas, a volunteer with the Marine Mammal Center, and a certified skydiving instructor.
Garland Allen is the former Chicago Market Leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s state and local tax consulting practice and before that was a tax partner in the Chicago law firm of Hopkins & Sutter (now Foley & Lardner).
Stephen F. Rohde is a constitutional lawyer, lecturer, writer and political activist. He is chair emeritus of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California; immediate past chair of Bend the Arc, a Jewish Partnership for Justice; past president of the Beverly Hills Bar Association; and is a founder of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace.
Stacy L. Mallicoat is a Professor of Criminal Justice at California State University, Fullerton. Her research focuses on issues of public opinion and the death penalty.
Robert Sanger has been a criminal defense lawyer in Santa Barbara for over 40 years and has defended people charged with capital offenses since the reinstitution of the death penalty in California. He is Past President of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice (CACJ), a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and teaches law school classes in Forensic Science.
Beth Webb is a member of California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and a tireless advocate of abolition. In 2011, her sister, Laura, was killed, and her mother, Hattie, was wounded in the Salon Meritage Shooting in Seal Beach, CA. Beth worked with the other victims’ family members to oppose the death penalty in the resulting trial, based on her opposition to the practice and on the fact that it would cause the families to endure a painful and unending litigation process. Beth even spoke to the Orange County District Attorney to let him know her opposition to the death penalty, although the DA rebuffed her while still continuing to tout his “victims’ rights” bona fides. In 2017, the defendant was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole because the judge presiding over the case found that the corruption of the OCDA’s office and OC Sheriff’s Department had been so pervasive that he could not guarantee a Constitutional sentencing hearing. In 2016, Beth was one of the most forceful campaigners for Prop. 62, a statewide ballot initiative that nearly abolished the death penalty in California. She continues to be active in the fight to end the death penalty and to challenge corrupt prosecutors at the local level.”
Mike Farrell is an actor and a human rights and social justice advocate. He has traveled the country, speaking, writing and lobbying against the death penalty for over three decades and has been president of the board of directors of Death Penalty Focus for over 20 years.
Please join Sister Helen Prejean, DPF President Mike Farrell, and TCADP in urging Collin County DA Greg Willis, Gov. Greg Abbott, and the Texas Ct of Criminal Appeals not to kill Ivan Cantu this Wednesday, February 28. [Unfortunately, his execution was carried out.] Ivan was convicted of the 2001 killing of his cousin, James Mosqueda, and Mosqueda’s fiancée, Amy Kitchen. But there is so much wrong with the case against
Robert Badinter, the former French Minister of Justice and the man who, in 1981, in one of his first acts as justice minister in the government of President François Mitterrand, wrote the law that abolished capital punishment in France, died early on Friday. He was 95. At a commemoration ceremony on the 40th anniversary of that historic achievement last September, with French President Macron at his side, Badinter declared, “I
In California’s Riverside County, two Black men challenging their separate death penalty prosecutions under the California Racial Justice Act (AB 256) were granted evidentiary hearings by a California Court of Appeals late last month. Russell Austin and Michael Mosby argued that “the death penalty in Riverside County is tainted with racial inequality — and offered statistical studies, along with other evidence, reaching that conclusion,” the ACLU Southern California announced in
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond and Department of Corrections Executive Director Steven Harpe are asking the state Court of Criminal Appeals to set the execution dates for the next six people it plans to kill at 90-day intervals. The state had scheduled 12 executions for 2024. “The present pace of executions, every 60 days, is too onerous and not sustainable,” DOC ED Harpe stated in the joint motion https://www.oag.ok.gov/sites/g/files/gmc766/f/documents/2024/in_re_execution_dates_1.30.24.pdf to
In her essay in Politico Magazine, USF School of Law Professor Lara Bazelon says the downward trend in death sentences that began after hitting a peak in the mid-1990s, “is beginning to reverse.” She notes that in 2021, there were 11 executions in the U.S. and one year later, in 2022, there were 18. In 2023, there were 24 people executed, the highest in five years. The reason for the
The American Bar Association (ABA) has sent a compelling letter to Governor Gavin Newsom concerning the case of death-row inmate Kevin Cooper. In this letter, the ABA expressed ongoing concerns about Cooper’s conviction and the transparency of the investigation process. The ABA highlighted that all law enforcement files were not disclosed during the investigation, urging the Governor to ensure full disclosure of relevant evidence. They emphasized the importance of due
U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker rejected Kenneth Smith’s request for an injunction to stop Alabama from executing him with nitrogen gas late last month, making his execution, scheduled for January 25, more likely, although the constitutionality of using nitrogen gas in state killing could be raised in the U.S. Supreme Court. No other state has ever attempted to kill a person using nitrogen gas, although Oklahoma and Mississippi have
Florida prosecutor seeks death penalty in sex abuse case in a test of a new state law A Florida prosecutor announced late last month that he will seek the death penalty in a child sexual assault case. The indictment is a test of a new state law that allows a person convicted of the rape of a minor to be sentenced to death. In a statement on his website, State
“Texas remained an unfortunate outlier as just one of five states to carry out executions in 2023, leading the nation with eight people put to death this year,” the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty stated in its annual report, “Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2023: The Year in Review.” The report noted that the majority of the eight men killed by the state in 2023 had “significant intellectual