“I’m doing the best I can through letters,” Nancy remembers. “I just kept thinking that they’re going to figure out they’ve got the wrong guy. And Mom wrote that everything was going to be fine.”
“Enough of a flawed system that disproportionately targets minorities; that cannot prevent the killing of innocents; that doesn’t have any impact on crime rates, that
“When I got called into the office and was told I was going to try this case I was fired up. I was excited to be recognized . . . It was a promotion,”
“In Florida, there is no witness room for the family and friends of the condemned. They have to leave after they say goodbye in the morning, and never see that person again. As the spiritual advisor, I remain in the death house until it’s time to prepare [the inmate] for the gurney. I’m present in the witness room, and I sit in the front row, where he can see me. He knows he can look at me when the time comes.”
“We chose Bill’s story because we wanted to crack open the failures of the criminal justice system, systemically. The racism, the lack of care for veterans and the mentally ill . . . . The only time the government takes control is in punishment.”
“We know from the grand jury report that my sister pleaded for her life, saying ‘Please don’t shoot me, you don’t have to do this.
“No one can speak personally about conducting and being personally responsible for killing people in the name of society better than I can.”
As we celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., let’s recognize his denunciation of capital punishment. Share this picture by clicking here and show
I knew if I wanted to see Tom one last time I had to leave for the prison soon. It was already late in the
Fourteen years ago, the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment issued a report recommending 85 reforms designed to minimize the possibility that an innocent person would be executed under that state’s death penalty scheme. One year later, Southern California criminal defense attorney (and DPF board member) Robert Sanger analyzed the report in light of California’s death penalty system, and concluded that more than 92 percent of the same reforms were needed
Angela Corey, the Florida State Attorney for the Fourth Judicial Circuit, whose jurisdiction included Duval County, which had the highest number of death sentences per capita in the nation, lost her reelection bid in the Republican primary late last month. Corey, whom the Nation suggested could be “the cruelest prosecutor in America,” was trounced by Melissa Nelson, a former prosecutor, 64 percent to 26 percent. Corey is probably best known
“I described to the jury how I had to tell my six-year old daughter that she would never see her daddy again. I told them about her putting a flower on the coffin, hugging his coffin. I pulled no punches, let me tell you. I made that jury understand how much pain I was in, how much pain my family was in. I was very persuasive.”
A man who was wrongfully convicted of murder in New Orleans, and served 18 years, 14 on death row, in Angola State Prison before being freed, filed a petition earlier this month asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate what he describes as “a disturbing pattern of lawlessness, corruption and prosecutorial misconduct by the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office.” John Thompson is asking the department’s Civil Rights Division to
Last week, the Delaware Supreme Court issued an order declaring that the state’s death penalty law was unconstitutional. This makes Delaware the 20th state (plus the District of Columbia) to ban the death penalty, and the eighth state to end the death penalty in the last nine years. This decision also raises constitutional questions about the death penalty in California and other states. In a 148-page opinion, the court said
“If putting him to death would bring my mama back, I’d want him dead. But that won’t happen, so what’s the point of killing him? I’m just trying to do the best I can and honor the memory of my mama. I believe in my heart she wouldn’t want this boy put to death.”
In Utah, legislators are planning to introduce a bill that would “fast-track” the death penalty appeals process to compete with a bill calling for repeal of the death penalty. The repeal bill passed the Senate earlier this year but failed to make it to the House floor before the end of its session. KSL reports that state fiscal analysts estimated a capital murder trial costs $1.6 million more than a
Former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter. California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. Former California Attorney General John Van de Kamp. Former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso. Don Heller, author of California’s Death Penalty Law. Ron Briggs, former El Dorado County Supervisor who led the campaign for California’s Death Penalty Law in 1978. Gil Garcetti, former Los Angeles County District Attorney. These are just a few of the leaders, lawmakers,
Quin Denvir, a long-time criminal defense attorney — with significant stints as the State Public Defender and the Federal Defender for the Eastern District of California — embodied the zealous advocate, representing countless criminal defendants with fierce determination and more than occasional brilliance. He and I were co-counsel for Tom Thompson, who was executed on July 14, 1998 –a case that was fraught with legal errors, arbitrary rulings and mind-blowing unfairness, with serious questions of Tom’s guilt remaining