A petition drive that was started by five men exonerated from Ohio’s death row culminated today with the delivery of 100 thousand signatures to the
A diverse group of death penalty opponents held a news conference at the state capitol in Ohio on Wednesday to ask Gov. John Kasich to
Scharlette Holdman, who died last week, was renowned in the criminal justice world as one of the foremost death penalty mitigation specialists in the country.
William Morva was executed last night, July 6, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, for killing two people, a security guard and a sheriff’s deputy,
Two human rights experts at the United Nations are adding their voices to the thousands of people who have written, called, and tweeted Virginia Gov.
“If, from the tangled morass surrounding the death penalty generally, and Morva’s case, specifically — Governor McAuliffe is to emerge from his life or death
Almost six years ago, a man walked into a hair salon and killed his ex-wife and seven other people in Seal Beach, California. One of
William Morva suffers from delusional disorder, a disease that makes him believe things that aren’t true. It’s a serious mental illness, similar to schizophrenia, and
On May 7, 2017, Death Penalty Focus awarded Sen. Bernie Sanders with its top honor, the Abolition Award, for his commitment to ending executions in the United States. He then delivered a thoughtful, moving acceptance speech to those at the event. We now have the video, so you can see it as well.
In California, a 22-year-old man who pleaded guilty to a fatal shooting at a San Diego synagogue in April 2019 will be sentenced to life in prison without parole next month. CBS News reports that John T. Earnest agreed to plead guilty to opening fire at Chabad of Poway during Passover services, killing 60-year-old Lori Gilbert-Kaye, and wounding three others, in exchange for avoiding a possible death sentence. The agreement had
Support for the death penalty declined to 60% from 2020 when 65% were in favor, although a majority of Americans still support capital punishment “despite widespread doubts about its administration, fairness, and whether it deters serious crimes,” according to a recent Pew Research poll. According to the poll, released in June, 60% favor capital punishment for people convicted of murder, with 39% opposed. Surprisingly, 78% say there is some risk
“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 great risk to their future. It’s deeply fascinating and deeply troubling. The idea that someone would give a false confession is so counterintuitive, it fascinates me intellectually,” according to Richard A. Leo, a Professor of Law and Psychology at University of San Francisco’s School of Law.
It’s called the Golden Rule argument because it’s used by prosecutors to put jurors in the shoes of the victim. And according to Pepperdine Caruso School of Law Professor H. Mitchell Caldwell and recent Pepperdine Law School graduate Allison Mather, writing in the Regent University Law Review (behind a paywall), “Such arguments are nearly universally prohibited because they replace rational and deliberative decision-making with a blatant appeal to jurors’ emotions.” The lone
“I now believe that the death penalty should absolutely not be a punishment delivered by the state of Florida or for that matter, any place in the US or the world,” now-deceased former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerald Kogan says in his last known interview. Kogan says he became a death penalty opponent when “I began realizing that we’re executing people who probably are innocent.” It was a realization that came
Donna Doolin Larsen is tired. She hasn’t rested since 1995, when she, her mother-in-law, and her then 22-year-old son Keith walked out of her doctor’s office in Fresno, where he had driven her for knee surgery, and were greeted by police and FBI agents. They arrested Keith on the spot, on charges that he had killed two women and shot four others, all sex workers, from November 1994 through September
In his new book, A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays, Marc Bookman, the co-founder and executive director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, and a death penalty lawyer and writer, focuses on d As Bookman explains in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, “These cases seem absolutely absurd — but people should not come away thinking these are 12 outrageous, crazy, beyond-the-pale cases. What’s important about these is
In Virginia, there is no death row anymore. The Virginia Mercury reports that last weekend, prison officials announced the last two prisoners facing death sentences were sentenced to life without parole and moved to different facilities, leaving death row empty. Virginia officially abolished the death penalty in March. In Ohio, the Death Penalty Information Center reports that David Braden became the first prisoner in the nation taken off death row because of
“The first half of 2021 spotlighted two continuing death-penalty trends in the United States. On one hand, the continuing erosion of capital punishment in law and practice across the country; on the other hand, the extreme and often lawless conduct of the few jurisdictions that have attempted to carry out executions this year,” the Death Penalty Information Center reported last week in its 2021 Mid-Year Review. The stark difference between