Conservatives love to blame high violent crime rates on progressives and their criminal justice reform efforts, especially in California, which is why the recently-released state
South Carolina’s plan to execute men and women by electrocution or firing squad constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the state Constitution, a
Albert Woodfox, who spent 42 years in solitary confinement in Louisiana State Penitentiary (also known as Angola Prison) for a crime he didn’t commit before
The American Psychological Association called on the courts, Congress, and state legislatures to ban the death penalty for people younger than 21, “based on scientific
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt has issued a 60-day stay of execution for Richard Glossip. The stay is effective September 22, the day Glossip was scheduled
A former victim of James Coddington is asking Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt for mercy for Coddington, who is scheduled to be executed next Thursday. KWGS
A number of people on California’s death row could be resentenced in the wake of a state Supreme Court ruling earlier this month. The unanimous
James Coddington, a 50-year-old man who turned his life around in prison over the last 25 years, was executed by Oklahoma last Wednesday, two weeks
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
Last month we reported on a case that may have enormous implications for the future of the death penalty in California. Death Penalty Focus has since submitted an amicus letter asking the California Supreme Court to take up the case. Below you will find an excerpt to our story about the case and the amicus letter itself. To download and read the letter right now, click here. —– —– —–
The mass shootings last weekend have caused unimaginable pain and suffering. Dozens of people are dead. Hundreds of family members and friends are grieving. Entire communities are traumatized. We offer our deepest sympathies to all who are grieving. President Trump has called for the death penalty in response to our country’s epidemic of mass shootings. But, as the statistics bear out, the death penalty will not curtail the scourge of
The acclaimed documentary is now on Amazon’s video streaming platform.
In 1986, my 70-year-old mother was asleep in her own bed when a teenaged neighbor broke into her home, raped her, and then beat her to near death and left her face down in a partially filled bathtub. It was a spectacularly brutal, banner headline crime, called by the District Attorney one of the most heinous in the history of the county. Even in light of what happened, I am
The Department of Justice announced today that it has scheduled five executions in December and January; the first federal executions since 2003. “The federal death penalty is a disgrace,” says Death Penalty Focus President Mike Farrell. “Riddled with the same problems we find in the state systems, it is racially biased, arbitrary, and applied not to the ‘worst of the worst,’ but to those who suffered traumatic childhoods, are mentally
Death penalty lawyer and DPF board member Robert M. Sanger believes that the moratorium Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in March created “a paradigm shift in the reality of California’s death penalty.” And the result is that “a California jury in a capital case cannot be expected to provide a fair and reasoned penalty-phase determination free from speculation.” The California Supreme Court thinks his argument might be worth considering. Sanger is
“In Los Angeles County, which is known as a bastion of progressivism, we have a system that is churning out more death sentences than any other county in the country. And by seeking death in a discriminatory way, they are perpetuating a racist system,” says the Justice Collaborative’s Senior Legal Counsel Summer Lacey. “Bryan Stevenson says the death penalty is modern day lynching, and you picture him talking about Alabama,
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
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: