A Message from DPF President Mike Farrell
November 21, 2016
Dear Friend, I just want to say thank you, but I can’t resist saying a bit more. Thank you doesn’t seem to me to be
Dear Friend, I just want to say thank you, but I can’t resist saying a bit more. Thank you doesn’t seem to me to be
The first woman appointed to the California Supreme Court, and the first and last chief justice to be ousted, she was the target of death penalty supporters and big business.
The Los Angeles City Council announced its support for Prop 62 on Friday. The council joined 38 newspapers from all over the state, representing rural and urban areas, conservative and liberal ideologies, with large and small readerships, that have urged readers to vote Yes on 62 and No on 66.
One year after the legislature abolished the death penalty, Nebraska voters will decide whether to reinstate it; while in Oklahoma, voters will decide whether they want their death penalty scheme enshrined in the constitution.
Capital punishment was at the center of debates in states including Kansas, Florida, Georgia, and Alabama the past few weeks.
“You know it’s hard every day sitting in a courtroom knowing you’re totally innocent,” Graham says. “I was framed because of my beliefs and because I was outspoken about prison conditions.”
The case of Caryl Chessman reverberated throughout the US and around the world, as California’s 12-year battle to execute him was fought in the courts and in the media.
The UN releases a new book on the death penalty, and again calls for worldwide abolition.
States around the country continue to tinker with the “machinery of death.” Here are a few of the more interesting developments around the country in the past few weeks.
From Denver, where the new district attorney says she will not pursue the death penalty in murder cases, to North Carolina, which just marked 10 years since its last execution, the death penalty and its viability is being debated throughout the country.
For the past year-and-a-half, abolitionists, religious and political leaders, victims’ family members, and exonerees have shared their thoughts on the death penalty and why they work so hard to abolish it. Here are some of the highlights of those profiles.
In a surprise announcement, the US Department of Justice says it will investigate the scandal-plagued Orange County District Attorney and Sheriff’s office.
DPF President Mike Farrell wrote a letter to the governor of Alabama asking him to stop the execution of Ronald B. Smith because Smith’s jury recommended a life sentence, but the judge overrode the jury and sentenced him to death. Only Alabama allows a judge to override a jury’s sentence in a death penalty case.
Not quite a year after Nebraska legislators repealed their death penalty, voters brought it back last month, while Nebraska residents voted to enshrine their death penalty statute in the state constitution.
In New Jersey, two legislators want to bring back the death penalty, while in Nevada an assemblyman wants to abolish it. And those are just two of the capital punishment debates raging across the country in the past month. Executions, death penalty cases, legal rulings, and capital cases were front and center in several states. We look at some of the more significant developments.
He has devoted his life to ending the death penalty. After heading the campaign for Proposition 62, Mike Farrell returned this month to Death Penalty Focus, where he has served as president for almost 30 years. He talks about the campaign, its defeat, and where he thinks we should go from here.
It is the highest number of executions since Georgia reinstated the death penalty 43 years ago. But the execution was even more controversial because of the circumstances of the case, a miscarriage of justice so severe, a former chief justice of the state supreme court protested in an editorial in the New York Times.
The Justice That Works Act of 2016 did not receive majority support in the November election. We look at the campaign, some of the factors that led to its loss, and what the future of abolitionism may look like.