In a New York Times op-ed, “What Happens When Prosecutors Break the Law?” defense attorney Nina Morrison focuses on the case of Suffolk County, New
An American pharmaceutical company filed a lawsuit blocking Nevada’s scheduled execution of Scott Dozier on Wednesday. New Jersey-based Alvogen said the state had “illegitimately acquired”
The DPF Board of Directors announced this week that longtime social and criminal justice advocate Magdaleno Rose-Avila has been appointed to the position of Executive
Bobby James Moore will not be leaving Texas’ death row any time soon. On Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that Moore is
When the California Supreme Court unanimously ruled to overturn the death sentence of Robert Lewis Jr. late last month finding “substantial evidence” that he is
“In 34 years at the New York Times, I’ve never come across a case in America as outrageous as Kevin Cooper’s,” Nicholas Kristof wrote in
The ACLU of Northern California won a round in court late last month when a Marin County Superior Court judge ruled that its challenge to
In Texas, a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel said yesterday it will consider parts of an appeal that lawyers for death row prisoner Andre
Scott Turow notes that “Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner seems to be one of the few people in Illinois who misses the death penalty” in an
by Stephen Rohde When the story is told about how the death penalty was abolished in California, the work of a little-known legislative committee will deserve an entire chapter. On June 23, after hearing public comments, the six-member Committee on Revision of the Penal Code voted unanimously to approve a staff report with the following enlightened conclusion: “Eliminating the death penalty is a critical step towards creating a fair and
Stating that the Justice Department “must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely,” and noting “that obligation has special force in capital cases,” Attorney General Merrick Garland last week imposed a moratorium on the federal death penalty. The moratorium means no federal executions will be
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact:Mary Kate DeLucco415-243-0143mary@deathpenalty.org US Attorney General Merrick Garland Calls for a Moratorium on Federal Death Penalty Sacramento (July 2, 2021) — Stating that the Justice Department “must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States but is also treated fairly and humanely,” and noting “that obligation has special force in
In Arizona, corrections officials are preparing to execute death row prisoners with the same gas the Nazis used in mass killings at its concentration camps, the Washington Post reports. The paper says the state has refurbished its gas chamber — unused for 20 years — and has obtained the ingredients for the lethal gas known as Zyklon B. Defendants sentenced to death before 1992 will have the choice between lethal injection
“I am confident there will come a day when we will have abolished the death penalty, and we will wonder how we could possibly have let such an ineffective, irrational, immoral, and costly institution endure for so long,” says Dr. Philip Hansten, Professor Emeritus, School of Pharmacy, at the University of Washington. Hansten worked with an organization affiliated with Amnesty International to convince the American Pharmacists Association to include a
For Joe Giarratano, Virginia’s abolition of the death penalty was a personal victory. He was on Virginia’s death row for 38 years before being released in December 2017, and practically from the day he got out, he’d been working to get the death penalty abolished. It was a victory that reverberated beyond the commonwealth and across the country, not only because it is the first Southern state to do so
Last week, the California Racial Justice Act for All (AB 256), which addresses institutionalized and implicit racial bias in criminal cases, passed the state Assembly and has moved on to the Senate. The bill, sponsored by Assemblymember Ash Kalra, would make retroactive a similar law that was adopted in January, giving those with prior, racially biased convictions and sentences the right to seek relief. The RJA was a first-of-its-kind law in
The California Supreme Court last week heard oral arguments from both sides on an appeal by a Los Angeles man who says his death sentence violated state laws because the jury did not agree unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt on the aggravating circumstances that justified his sentence. Don’te LaMont McDaniel and a co-defendant were convicted of killing a rival gang member and an eyewitness to the attack in Los Angeles
It was unanimous. “Eliminating the death penalty is a critical step towards creating a fair and equitable justice system for all in California, as the ultimate punishment is plagued by legal, racial, bureaucratic, financial, geographic, and moral problems that have proven intractable,” the California Committee on Revision of the Penal Code said in a report released last month. The recommendation reverberated through the political, criminal and social justice, and legal communities,
