Voices: Nicola White
February 9, 2018
Nicola White is a London-based artist whose work is fashioned from the fragments of wood, glass, pottery, and other artifacts she finds on the banks
Nicola White is a London-based artist whose work is fashioned from the fragments of wood, glass, pottery, and other artifacts she finds on the banks
Bethany Webb, whose sister was killed and mother wounded in a mass shooting in Seal Beach, California in 2011, has not given up her crusade
Malcolm Alexander was convicted in New Orleans in 1980 of a rape in a case where the only evidence against him was the eyewitness identification
On February 10, from 2-3:30 p.m., in San Francisco, we are co-sponsoring with the Justice Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America, San Francisco chapter,
This Friday, January 26, is a day of meditation, prayer and action for San Quentin death row prisoner Jarvis Masters, who was wrongfully convicted of
It’s easy to forget that California is a state with the death penalty on its books, and it’s not hard to see why. The state
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court sent the case of Keith Tharpe, who was sentenced to death in 1991 in Georgia, to a lower court
Doyle Lee Hamm has been on Alabama’s death row for 30 years. He is 60 years old, and is terminally ill with cranial and lymphatic
There are six major-party candidates running for governor of California, and according to a recent report in the San Francisco Chronicle, all but one is
Today, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously to recommend clemency for Thomas Whitaker. Whitaker is scheduled to be executed on Thursday for his role in arranging the murders of his mother and brother. His father also was shot in the ambush and survived; he has forgiven his son and has been asking for clemency for him. Reuters reports that, at a news conference after the board’s recommendation,
Washington’s state Senate voted to end the death penalty by a vote of 26-22 yesterday. The bill, which would repeal the death penalty and replace it with a sentence of life without parole, now goes to the House where legislators will have 22 days to vote on it. The Seattle Times reports that the Senate vote was bipartisan, “with a handful of Democrats crossing over to vote no, and five
Tennessee, which hasn’t put anyone to death since 2009, is now hoping to execute eight people before June 1. That means eight executions in four months. The reason? State Attorney General Herbert Slatery says the state needs to act soon because lethal injection drugs may not be available after that date. The Nashville Scene reports that the plan was announced even though corrections officials were warned in January, in emails
Thirty-five years ago, the American Bar Association was one of the first organizations to call for abolition of the death penalty for those under the age of 18. This week, stating that “it is now time to revise its dated position,” the ABA is calling on death penalty states to rule out sentencing or executing any individuals who were 21 years or younger when they committed the crime. The ABA’s
Four U.S. Senators introduced a bill this week that would allow federal prosecutors in death penalty cases to impanel a second jury for sentencing if the first jury fails to reach a unanimous vote for death. The senators, all Republicans, named the bill, “Eric’s Law,” for Eric Williams, a federal correctional officer in a Pennsylvania penitentiary, who was killed by a prisoner. The prisoner, who was already serving a life
Texas executed John Battaglia last week, the third person executed this year, and the second of the week. The 62-year-old was sentenced to die in 2002 for the murders of his two daughters, whom he shot in 2001 while their mother listened on the phone. The Texas Tribune reported that Battaglia’s lawyers filed a last-minute appeal on the grounds that the lethal injection drugs officials planned to use had expired,
Two years ago, we reported on the use of “ethnic adjustment” by prosecutors in death penalty cases, which artificially raises minority defendants’ IQ scores. In an interview with DFP at the time, death penalty attorney (and DPF board member) Robert M. Sanger described the practice as “a symptom of a dysfunctional death penalty system where prosecutors seek to ‘win’ by executing the mentally disabled and people of color at all
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation released its revised lethal drug protocol late last month, and it doesn’t address the problems that plagued its previous versions. “It’s unfortunate the CDCR released a new lethal drug protocol that still contains so many flaws, and completely ignores the fact that these drugs are either banned or unavailable,” says Death Penalty Focus Community Outreach & Education Director David Crawford. The revised single-drug
In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich granted a reprieve to Raymond Tibbetts, who was scheduled to be executed next Tuesday for the 1997 murder of his wife, Judith Sue Crawford, and their landlord, Fred Hicks, in Cincinnati. Kasich’s action came in the wake of a letter sent by a juror in TIbbetts’ trial asking Gov. Kasich to commute his sentence to life without parole. Ross Allen Geiger says that during the