In brief: November 2018
November 9, 2018
In Mississippi, a man who has been on death row for over 20 years, after being tried six times for a quadruple murder in 1996,
In Mississippi, a man who has been on death row for over 20 years, after being tried six times for a quadruple murder in 1996,
In his op-ed in the Fort Worth Star Telegram, “It’s Wrong for an Imperfect System to Impose an Irreversible Punishment,” former district attorney Tim Cole notes
Tennessee’s nine-year break in executions ended in August when the state killed Billy Ray Irick by lethal injection. Last week, Edmund Zagorski was executed by
Edmund Zagorski was executed in Tennessee last night by electric chair, the first time in 11 years the state has used that method. The 63-year-old
When the state has gotten the go-ahead to execute a man by electrocuting him, it’s difficult to understand why they would fight a request by
It’s foolish to hope for any sort of measured or nuanced response from Donald Trump, but his thoughtless, knee-jerk, all-too-predictable immediate demand that the man accused
The Tennessean has a story today on how the state will test the electric chair it will use to kill Edmund Zagorski next Thursday. The
The majority of Americans no longer believe the death penalty is applied fairly. For the first time since Gallup polled on this issue in 2000,
There is nothing new about comics depicting tragedy. Comics and graphic novels have been covering serious topics for years. Art Spiegelman’s classic graphic novel, Maus,
“New death sentences and executions remained near historic lows in 2018 and a twentieth state [Washington] abolished capital punishment, as public opinion polls, election results, legislative actions, and court decisions all reflected the continuing erosion of the death penalty across the country,” according to the Death Penalty Information Center’s annual report released today. In 2018, 14 states and the federal government imposed death sentences, with 57 percent of the projected 42 sentences
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice obtains its lethal injection drugs “from a pharmacy that regulators have repeatedly cited for dangerous practices,” according to a report by BuzzFeed News. Like other death penalty states, Texas passed a law that keeps the source of its lethal injection drugs secret, but reporter Chris McDaniel obtained documents which he says reveal that Greenpark Compounding Pharmacy in Houston was one source. “Its license has
“Until I can be sure that everyone sentenced to death in Illinois is truly guilty, until I can be sure with moral certainty that no innocent man or woman is facing a lethal injection, no one will meet that fate,” then-Governor George Ryan said after announcing a moratorium in 2000. Ryan cited a series of articles in the Chicago Tribune that revealed a broken system, riddled by racism, wrongful convictions,
In her article, “This Is What Wrongful Conviction Does to a Family,” in Politico, Lara Bazelon looks at the arrest of two men for the 1982 rape and murder of Debbie Sue Carter in Oklahoma. But after Ron Williamson was sentenced to death, and Dennis Fritz to life without parole in 1988, DNA evidence exonerated both, and implicated another man, who was eventually sentenced to life without parole. The case rocked
In Texas, three men were executed in the space of four weeks: 43-year-old Alvin Braziel was executed on Tuesday for the 1993 murder of Douglas White during a robbery. The Houston Chronicle reports that defense attorneys attempted to obtain a stay based on a last-minute admission of prosecutorial misconduct, but both the trial court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the appeal, with two justices on the high
Thanks so much to all of you who have signed our petition to California Gov. Jerry Brown asking him to remove as many people as possible from Death Row before he leaves office in January. But if you haven’t yet signed it, here’s a video from DPF President Mike Farrell explaining why he thinks it’s important. The state Constitution allows the governor to exercise mercy by granting clemency and commuting
Representatives from Catholic and other organizations opposed to the death penalty delivered six thousand signatures to California Gov. Jerry Brown yesterday asking him to commute the sentences of the hundreds of men and women on death row before he leaves office. The effort, coordinated by the California Catholic Conference, involved delivering six thousand letters signed by individuals from around the state. A staff person in the governor’s office accepted the
There was much to celebrate after this week’s election, especially the strides made in criminal justice reform. In Louisiana, Amendment 2 passed easily, which means that a unanimous jury is now required for a conviction in a felony trial. Previously, a jury only needed 10 of 12 votes, even to sentence a defendant to life in prison. Amendment 4 passed in Florida, which means nearly 1.5 million former felons who
He spent 14 years, 10 of them on death row, and on Monday, Florida prosecutors announced they would not proceed with a retrial for Clemente Javier Aguirre for the murder of two people in 2004. An immigrant from Honduras with no criminal history, Aguirre was convicted of killing his former neighbors, Cheryl Williams and her mother, Carole Bareis, and was sentenced to death in 2006. His conviction was unanimously overturned