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Watch Now: Women on Death Row Webinar

Watch a recap of the first of our fall webinar series with “Women on Death Row,” moderated by Diann Rust-Tierney, Executive Director of the National Coalition To Abolish the Death Penalty, in conversation with two women who wrongfully spent time on death row.

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Voices: Bethany Webb

“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

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In brief: October 2021

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law last week a bill that expands another criminal justice reform bill that became law two years ago.

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Mississippi DA says Flowers will be tried again

Three weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 2010 conviction of Curtis Flowers, who has been tried six times for a 1996 quadruple murder in Mississippi. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the seven-justice majority, noted “the extraordinary facts of this case.” Over the course of those six trials, he wrote, “The State’s relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals strongly suggests that the State wanted to

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1,500 executions; 166 exonerations

Two milestones were reached in June, starkly illustrating how broken the death penalty in the United States is. In North Carolina, prosecutors formally dismissed all charges against Charles Ray Finch on June 14, making him the 166th person to be exonerated in the U.S. since 1973. Six days later, Georgia executed Marion Wilson, the 1500th person to be executed in the U.S. since 1976. Or, to put it another way:

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In brief: July 2019

New Mexico closed its death row late last month. The last two condemned prisoners, Timothy Allen and Robert Fry, had their sentences vacated by the NM Supreme Court on June 28, and will be resentenced to life in prison. New Mexico actually abolished its death penalty in 2009 — 10 years ago — but because Fry and Allen’s convictions and sentencing occurred prior to 2009, they remained on death row.

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While we’re on the subject . . .

In his chapter, “Capital Punishment,” in the American Bar Association’s The State of Criminal Justice 2019,  Ronald J. Tabak reviews significant developments through the past year up to and including the May 30 abolition of the death penalty in New Hampshire. He notes that since the death penalty resumed in 1972 after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Furman v. Georgia, “There was not in 2018 a single county in

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ACLU report: “All of the 22 people who received death sentences while DA Lacey has been in office are people of color.”   

A report published today by the ACLU, “A Closer Look at Los Angeles County’s Troubling Death-Penalty Track Record,” finds that under LA District Attorney Jackie Lacey, the DA’s office “continues to waste the jurisdiction’s precious time and resources on death penalty prosecutions.” And, the report notes, these capital sentences reveal “stunning racial disparities that eviscerate any claim Lacey may make about representing constituents or delivering what the people of L.A.

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“It’s not over”

Early last month, a small group of California district attorneys organized what it called a “Victims of Murder Justice Tour” in a few cities around the state in which they held news conferences with family members of victims to protest Governor Gavin Newsom’s moratorium on the death penalty. Several of the DAs are from counties that fall within what law professor Robert J. Smith called the “Death Belt” of the United

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Study: The death penalty means higher taxes, fewer government services

“I have no reason to believe government officials are deliberately hiding the way they pay for capital trials, but I do believe taxpayers in death penalty states are paying for these trials in ways they would not realize.” And some of the ways they’re paying, according to West Virginia University Economics Professor Alexander Lundberg in his recently published paper, “On the Public Finance of Capital Punishment,” is by paying higher property

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New Hampshire repeals its death penalty

Twenty-one years after New Hampshire legislator Renny Cushing introduced his first bill to repeal the death penalty, he was finally successful last month when the legislature overrode Gov. Chris Sununu’s veto, and abandoned capital punishment. Twenty one states have now outlawed the barbaric punishment, and four others have moratoria in place. In addition, the repeal means no state in New England has the death penalty. “Our efforts do pay off

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Four states, five executions

The machinery of death was in high gear in the South in May. Georgia, Tennessee, and Florida each killed a man, and Alabama executed two. Georgia began the month by executing Scotty Garnell Morrow on May 2 for the 1994 murder of his ex-girlfriend, Barbara Ann Young, and her friend, Tonya Woods. He was also convicted of shooting a third woman, LaToya Horne, who survived. Morrow, who apologized to the

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