Stating that, “After the Florida Supreme Court’s decision on the death penalty, it became abundantly clear to me that the death penalty law in the
“I can’t think of a more exciting time to be part of the movement to abolish the death penalty,” new DPF Executive Director Nancy Haydt
In Virginia, the Washington Post reports that progressive challengers defeated longtime incumbent prosecutors in Fairfax and Arlington counties on Tuesday. “The shift marks a stunning change:
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
“In Los Angeles County, which is known as a bastion of progressivism, we have a system that is churning out more death sentences than any other county in the country. And by seeking death in a discriminatory way, they are perpetuating a racist system,” says the Justice Collaborative’s Senior Legal Counsel Summer Lacey. “Bryan Stevenson says the death penalty is modern day lynching, and you picture him talking about Alabama,
Three weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 2010 conviction of Curtis Flowers, who has been tried six times for a 1996 quadruple murder in Mississippi. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the seven-justice majority, noted “the extraordinary facts of this case.” Over the course of those six trials, he wrote, “The State’s relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals strongly suggests that the State wanted to
Two milestones were reached in June, starkly illustrating how broken the death penalty in the United States is. In North Carolina, prosecutors formally dismissed all charges against Charles Ray Finch on June 14, making him the 166th person to be exonerated in the U.S. since 1973. Six days later, Georgia executed Marion Wilson, the 1500th person to be executed in the U.S. since 1976. Or, to put it another way:
New Mexico closed its death row late last month. The last two condemned prisoners, Timothy Allen and Robert Fry, had their sentences vacated by the NM Supreme Court on June 28, and will be resentenced to life in prison. New Mexico actually abolished its death penalty in 2009 — 10 years ago — but because Fry and Allen’s convictions and sentencing occurred prior to 2009, they remained on death row.
In his chapter, “Capital Punishment,” in the American Bar Association’s The State of Criminal Justice 2019, Ronald J. Tabak reviews significant developments through the past year up to and including the May 30 abolition of the death penalty in New Hampshire. He notes that since the death penalty resumed in 1972 after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Furman v. Georgia, “There was not in 2018 a single county in
A report published today by the ACLU, “A Closer Look at Los Angeles County’s Troubling Death-Penalty Track Record,” finds that under LA District Attorney Jackie Lacey, the DA’s office “continues to waste the jurisdiction’s precious time and resources on death penalty prosecutions.” And, the report notes, these capital sentences reveal “stunning racial disparities that eviscerate any claim Lacey may make about representing constituents or delivering what the people of L.A.
Early last month, a small group of California district attorneys organized what it called a “Victims of Murder Justice Tour” in a few cities around the state in which they held news conferences with family members of victims to protest Governor Gavin Newsom’s moratorium on the death penalty. Several of the DAs are from counties that fall within what law professor Robert J. Smith called the “Death Belt” of the United
“I have no reason to believe government officials are deliberately hiding the way they pay for capital trials, but I do believe taxpayers in death penalty states are paying for these trials in ways they would not realize.” And some of the ways they’re paying, according to West Virginia University Economics Professor Alexander Lundberg in his recently published paper, “On the Public Finance of Capital Punishment,” is by paying higher property
Twenty-one years after New Hampshire legislator Renny Cushing introduced his first bill to repeal the death penalty, he was finally successful last month when the legislature overrode Gov. Chris Sununu’s veto, and abandoned capital punishment. Twenty one states have now outlawed the barbaric punishment, and four others have moratoria in place. In addition, the repeal means no state in New England has the death penalty. “Our efforts do pay off
