Voices: California People of Faith’s Terry McCaffrey
August 24, 2022
Terry McCaffrey is on a mission. Chair of the East-West San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the California People of Faith and Amnesty International’s Death
Terry McCaffrey is on a mission. Chair of the East-West San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the California People of Faith and Amnesty International’s Death
A year ago, wrongful convictions and the death penalty were not something that crossed my mind very often. As a Japanese major, I generally stay
“Ten years seem so long, but when I think about the shooting, about losing Laura, it seems both like it happened yesterday and a million
Death Penalty Focus lost a dear friend and one of its most loyal supporters last week. Actor, activist, and all-around good guy, Ed Asner, died late last month at his home in Los Angeles. He was 91.
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
It’s taken 28 years, but William Richards is officially an innocent man. Three weeks ago, a San Bernardino Superior Court judge declared Richards “factually innocent”
“I am confident there will come a day when we will have abolished the death penalty, and we will wonder how we could possibly have
An Interview with Michael Radelet, Ph.D. Michael Radelet is a sociologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder, where he served as chair of the Sociology Department
“Inchoate rage” is what compelled writer, director, producer Edward Zwick to co-produce and direct “Trial by Fire,” a feature film about the conviction and execution
“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
(Editor’s Note: The front page of this newsletter spells Joe Giarattano’s name incorrectly in the headline. We would correct it, but the computer program we use won’t
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
When Vicente Benavides walked out of San Quentin State Prison late last month, the first prisoner in recent memory to walk off California’s death row,
One year ago, we wrote about the case of Walter Ogrod, a man whom many believe was wrongfully convicted of killing four-year-old Barbara Jean Horn
The State of Michigan is the only state to have a death penalty ban in its constitution. That ban was enshrined 116 years after the
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
“I have hope. And because I have hope I have life.” For Kevin Cooper, who has been on San Quentin’s death row since 1985, it
“In the Executioner’s Shadow” is a documentary that examines the death penalty from the per-spective of three very different people, and their very different experiences:
“We have lost one of the best among us, but each day when we do something good for a client, we are renewing our connection
When Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals sentenced the man who killed her sister, wounded her mother, and killed seven others in the worst
John T. Thorngren is 76 years old, and has had three heart attacks and two open heart surgeries. But he had one last item on
“To spend 20 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and emerge with his humanity and dignity intact … to spend 20 years, day in and day out, fighting for his freedom, it was just so extraordinary. It was totally compelling.”
“Marie is one of the unsung heroes from the early years of the fight against the modern death penalty. [Her] work on death row took a
“For justification of any punishment go back to the Enlightenment,” University of Baltimore Law Professor John Bessler says. “Philosophers such as Montesquieu and Cesare Beccaria
Last year, the editors of the Southwestern Law Review asked Stephen Rohde, a constitutional lawyer and DPF board chair, if he was interested in writing
For 16 years, Thomas Lowenstein has been following the case of Walter Ogrod, and has finally written a book about how he ended up on death row in spite of no real evidence of his guilt.
Four Spanish journalists were so affected by the experiences of death row exonerees they spent six years and much of their own money to make a documentary about a group of four men who call themselves the “Resurrection Club.”
“I’m no bleeding heart. I worked in Dade County Homicide for 16 of my 30 years on the job, and saw it all….”
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.
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.
“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.”
“We actually thought at the time, naively, that a broader death penalty would deter criminals,” Briggs says. “We truly believed the bill would reduce crime in California.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I have represented several death row inmates who were able to avoid execution, and I lost one, Tom Thompson. He was very likely innocent of capital murder, and his case has been chronicled by Judge Reinhardt as a miscarriage of justice.”
“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.”
“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.”
“You’re talking about a person who was basically saved by half of one cell. A cell the size of a mustard seed saved my life. I always think of the Bible and how Jesus said, ‘If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, nothing will be impossible for you.’ I knew I was an innocent man, and that trumped everything for me.”
“I will advocate for the death penalty to be abolished before the Lord calls me home. We can do better. We’re evolving on the issue of crime and punishment and we need a more restorative justice system. It behooves me, as a pro-life Bible conservative, to advance a whole life ethos.”
“The Golden Rule … reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development. This conviction has led me, from the beginning of my ministry, to advocate at different levels for the global abolition of the death penalty.”
“It is clear that there are overwhelming ethical, financial, and religious reasons to abolish the death penalty,” former president Jimmy Carter wrote in a 2012 op-ed titled “Show Death Penalty the Door”
“I have an obligation. I have a charge to keep. I don’t get tired. I won’t sell out. I won’t be bought out.”
Like many of you, we’re shocked at President Trump’s executive order, “Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety,” and believe it is a publicity stunt based on his usual rhetoric of fear and hatred. His intention is to reverse the progress that has been made in slowing down and, in some places, ending the killing of those imprisoned by the state. But knowledge is power. We know that the
President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row today, declining to commute the sentences of Robert D. Bowers, convicted of killing 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018; Dylann Roof, who shot and killed nine Black parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015 and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who, with his brother, killed three people and
California Gov. Gavin Newsom “has demonstrated a callous disregard for the dark history” of the use of solitary confinement in the state’s prisons and jails, Jack Morris writes in his powerful CalMatters essay Morris points to Newsom’s two-time veto of of the California Mandela Act in 2022 and 2023, which would have limited the practice, and again this year when he killed AB280, which would have limited solitary confinement to
Curtis Lee Ervin was sentenced to death in 1991 for the murder-for-hire of Carlene McDonald in 1986. Late last month, Federal Judge Vince Chhabria, at the request of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who “conceded that a Batson violation occurred” in Ervin’s case, ruled that Ervin should either be released or retried within 60 days. Ervin, now 71, has been on death row for 33 years. His case is one
A woman incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla died earlier this month during a heat wave that sent Chowchilla’s temperatures over 111 degrees during the Fourth of July weekend, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Elizabeth Nomura, an organizer with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, told the Chronicle that her organization had received “distressing” messages from several women at the prison, who reported temperatures over 95 degrees
“Amnesty International’s monitoring shows that in 2023 the lowest number of countries on record carried out the highest number of known executions in close to a decade,” AI states in its annual report, “The Use of the Death Penalty in 2023.” “These figures confirm trends of recent years that pointed to the ever-increasing isolation of retentionist countries.” Global use of the death penalty in 2023 increased 31% from 2022. The
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Tuesday signed into law a bill that will allow a person to be sentenced to death for the rape of a child, the Center Square reports. Tennessee now joins Florida, which passed a similar bill in 2023, defying the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008). That decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy for the 5-4 majority, found that “a death sentence for
Donald Trump is promising that if he is reelected in November, he will execute every one of the 42 men on federal death row. The declaration is included in an 877-page document released by the Trump campaign, “Project 2025,” laying out all the monstrous plans the administration will unleash if he is not defeated. On page 554 is a paragraph promising to “do everything possible to obtain finality for the
“Of course, the death penalty is racist. And it would be wrong even if it weren’t,” the Los Angeles Times stated in an editorial earlier this week. The piece is in response to two significant developments that occurred last month, highlighting the racism inherent in capital punishment. The first was a writ petition filed by the Office of the State Public Defender, legal organizations, and civil rights groups at the