Crossing the River Styx: The Memoir of a Death Row Chaplain
March 21, 2023
“I was haunted by Russ before I even knew him. I tried to wrap my mind around what it was like to sit across from
“I was haunted by Russ before I even knew him. I tried to wrap my mind around what it was like to sit across from
In Texas, corrections officials executed two men this month, Gary Green and Arthur Brown, Jr. Texas has killed five men this year. With last week’s
A state district judge withdrew the April 5 execution warrant for Andre Thomas earlier this month to give Thomas’s lawyers time to prepare for a
Declaring that he wants to “literally transform this place,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced last week that San Quentin State Prison will convert from a
Bucking a trend of decreasing support for the death penalty in the United States, Republican-dominated legislatures in South Carolina and Florida are attempting to expand
Three months after a series of botched executions caused Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to call for a pause in state killing to allow time for
Florida corrections officials killed Donald Dillbeck last Thursday. They did so despite the extensive evidence of his horrific sexual and physical abuse as a child,
Former Death Penalty Focus board member Donald Spoto died earlier this month. He was 81. His death from a brain hemorrhage was announced by his
“Justice Department standards on federal death penalty called confusing,” was the headline in a recent Washington Post article. The paper interviewed federal defense lawyers and
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” of the murder of his wife, Pamela, who was killed in 1993. Richards went to trial four times in San Bernardino County Superior Court before he was convicted. His first three trials all ended in a mistrial. What finally convinced a jury to convict him
By Mike Farrell Sloughing off a warning from the Vatican, the American Conference of Catholic Bishops seem to have enlisted in the Culture Wars with an act of shocking hypocrisy. While Pope Francis has espoused a consistent life ethic, a ”seamless garment” urging an end to both abortion and the death penalty, the American Bishops Conference recently voted by a large margin to move forward on drafting guidance that will
by Stephen Rohde When the story is told about how the death penalty was abolished in California, the work of a little-known legislative committee will deserve an entire chapter. On June 23, after hearing public comments, the six-member Committee on Revision of the Penal Code voted unanimously to approve a staff report with the following enlightened conclusion: “Eliminating the death penalty is a critical step towards creating a fair and
Stating that the Justice Department “must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely,” and noting “that obligation has special force in capital cases,” Attorney General Merrick Garland last week imposed a moratorium on the federal death penalty. The moratorium means no federal executions will be
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact:Mary Kate DeLucco415-243-0143mary@deathpenalty.org US Attorney General Merrick Garland Calls for a Moratorium on Federal Death Penalty Sacramento (July 2, 2021) — Stating that the Justice Department “must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States but is also treated fairly and humanely,” and noting “that obligation has special force in
In Arizona, corrections officials are preparing to execute death row prisoners with the same gas the Nazis used in mass killings at its concentration camps, the Washington Post reports. The paper says the state has refurbished its gas chamber — unused for 20 years — and has obtained the ingredients for the lethal gas known as Zyklon B. Defendants sentenced to death before 1992 will have the choice between lethal injection
“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 let such an ineffective, irrational, immoral, and costly institution endure for so long,” says Dr. Philip Hansten, Professor Emeritus, School of Pharmacy, at the University of Washington. Hansten worked with an organization affiliated with Amnesty International to convince the American Pharmacists Association to include a
For Joe Giarratano, Virginia’s abolition of the death penalty was a personal victory. He was on Virginia’s death row for 38 years before being released in December 2017, and practically from the day he got out, he’d been working to get the death penalty abolished. It was a victory that reverberated beyond the commonwealth and across the country, not only because it is the first Southern state to do so
Last week, the California Racial Justice Act for All (AB 256), which addresses institutionalized and implicit racial bias in criminal cases, passed the state Assembly and has moved on to the Senate. The bill, sponsored by Assemblymember Ash Kalra, would make retroactive a similar law that was adopted in January, giving those with prior, racially biased convictions and sentences the right to seek relief. The RJA was a first-of-its-kind law in