News & Updates

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,

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

“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