CA Gov. Newsom orders additional DNA testing in Cooper case
March 8, 2019
“Yay Gavin Newsom. I’m very thankful to him for having the courage, the guts, to stand up and say before California murders anyone on my
“Yay Gavin Newsom. I’m very thankful to him for having the courage, the guts, to stand up and say before California murders anyone on my
In New Hampshire on Thursday, by a veto-proof vote of 279-88, the House repealed the state’s death penalty and replaced it with a sentence of
In their paper, ” ‘A World of Steel-Eyed Death’: An Empirical Evaluation of the Failure of the Strickland Standard to Ensure Adequate Counsel to Defendants
“Everyone has a breaking point. Anyone can be convinced to confess, to lie. And it’s not only that they can but they do it at
California Gov. Gavin Newsom today ordered additional DNA testing on evidence in the case of Kevin Cooper, who was sent to death row almost 34
The Toledo Blade reports that Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is putting executions on hold because, he said today, “Ohio is not going to execute someone
Proposition 66 was passed by popular vote in 2016. Proponents insisted the proposition would speed up the process of capital trials and executions. It was big
Republican Governor Mike DeWine postponed the execution of Warren Keith Henness late last month and ordered the state Department of Rehabilitation & Correction to “to
“Kevin Cooper Case: Was the Wrong Man Convicted in the 1983 Chino Hills Massacre?” was the title of a two-hour episode on a “48 Hours”
When Gavin Newsom assumed office just four months ago, he promised Californians his administration would “be bold” and would “aim high.” With his decision to impose a moratorium on executions in his state, effective immediately, he kept both promises, and in so doing, cemented his legacy as a leader unafraid of making big decisions that will resonate for years to come. What he did last month took great courage, and the
On March 13, California Governor Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium on the death penalty, ensuring there would be no executions while he is in office. He also dismantled the state’s death chamber, and withdrew its lethal injection protocol. Noting the National Academy of Sciences “conservative” estimate that four percent of the people on death rows around the country were wrongfully convicted, Newsom acknowledged that of the 737 condemned men and
“Governor Gavin Newsom’s heroic act of declaring a moratorium on executions in our state has inspired us all,” DPF President Mike Farrell said in his letter https://deathpenalty.org/?p=4073 in this issue. And a poll from the Public Policy Institute of California conducted just two weeks after Newsom’s announcement, bears this out. “A record high 62 percent of adults” in California, 58 percent of whom are likely voters, chose life in prison
Two weeks after Gov. Newsom issued an Executive Order imposing a moratorium, two California Supreme Court justices issued their own critique of the death penalty system, and of Proposition 66, the initiative that promised to speed up executions that was passed by a slim margin in 2016. “California’s death penalty is an expensive and dysfunctional system that does not deliver justice or closure in a timely manner, if at all,” Justice
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a jury selection bias case last month in which Mississippi death row prisoner Curtis Flowers, an African-American, was tried six times for murder. Three of his convictions were overturned (because of misconduct on the part of the prosecutor), two ended when jurors were unable to render unanimous verdicts. What’s more, the same prosecutor in all six cases, District Attorney Doug Evans, appears
On Thursday, the Supreme Court considered whether to take the case of a South Dakota death row prisoner who maintains he was sentenced to death because of anti-gay bias on the jury. Charles Rhines, convicted of the 1992 murder of Donnivan Schaeffer during a robbery, was sentenced to death in 1993. While the jurors deliberated whether to sentence him to death or life without parole, they sent the trial judge
Dear Governor Newsom, Do you have ANY IDEA how refreshing it is to the SOUL to have a politician seek public office, who promises to stay true to something, and then actually ENACTS THE TRUTH once s/he gets into office? Who, in short, acts out of moral principle, not, simply, political expediency? You proved to be a man of your word, who, during your campaign professed to morally oppose the
If Alabama were to go ahead with its plan to execute 68-year-old Vernon Madison, he wouldn’t know why. Because of several strokes over the past few years, he has vascular dementia, which has left him with no memory of the crime that sent him to death row 33 years ago. And, because the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment precludes executing a prisoner who doesn’t understand the reasons
The headlines say it all. “The Stench of Prejudice in Keith Tharpe’s Death Sentence,” in the New York Times. “A juror used the N-word. Did that taint a Georgia death sentence?” asked the Los Angeles Times. “A Juror Who Questioned If Black Men Have Souls Sentenced One To Death,” wrote Newsweek. And yet, unbelievable as it may seem, even though one of the jurors who sent Keith Tharpe to Georgia’s