Oregon Supreme Court ruling likely to clear death row
October 11, 2021
The Oregon Supreme Court issued a ruling last week which will likely overturn the death sentences of all 23 prisoners on death row. In State v.
The Oregon Supreme Court issued a ruling last week which will likely overturn the death sentences of all 23 prisoners on death row. In State v.
“The circumstances that lead women to commit violent crimes are often complicated by a history of sexual and/or physical trauma….We know, for instance, that almost
In her Nevada Independent op-ed, “Nevada is preparing to execute a man with significant organic brain damage,” Dr. Natalie Novick Brown, a licensed clinical psychologist who evaluated
In California, the Los Angeles Daily News reports that Stanley Bernard Davis, sentenced to death in 1989 for the murder of Los Angeles college students Michelle Ann Boyd
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.
Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor has tentatively scheduled executions for seven men in five months, starting in October and continuing into February. If carried out, they will be the first executions in the state since 2015.
Two bills that would go a long way toward reforming California’s seriously flawed criminal justice systems are on hold until January.
When the California Supreme Court, late last month, upheld a state law that does not require a unanimous jury vote when sentencing a defendant to death, it not only disappointed many criminal justice advocates it surprised them as well.
“We are disappointed the Court didn’t take this step to address one of the many serious flaws in California’s capital punishment system,” Death Penalty Focus Board Chair Sarah Sanger stated. “The Court could have taken a big step toward confronting a deeply biased death penalty system.”
Read DPF’s statement here regarding the disappointing decision announced by the CA Supreme Court today.
Stating that, “After the Florida Supreme Court’s decision on the death penalty, it became abundantly clear to me that the death penalty law in the state of Florida is in direct conflict with my view and my vision for the administration of justice,” Aramis Ayala announced that she will not seek re-election as Orange-Osceola State Attorney. Ayala made the announcement in a video posted on her Facebook page. Soon after
“I can’t think of a more exciting time to be part of the movement to abolish the death penalty,” new DPF Executive Director Nancy Haydt says. “With New Hampshire’s repeal just a few weeks ago, 25 states — half the states in the nation — are without a death penalty or with a moratorium in place right now. It’s clear the tide is turning and consensus is building that this
In Virginia, the Washington Post reports that progressive challengers defeated longtime incumbent prosecutors in Fairfax and Arlington counties on Tuesday. “The shift marks a stunning change: Neither challenger has prosecuted a case in state court, but they bested incumbents with more than 60 years of experience between them in the court system,” the Post reports. In North Carolina, the Winston-Salem Journal reports that two experts, Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal
In his New York Times column, “When We Kill: Everything You Think You Know About the Death Penalty is Wrong,” Nicholas Kristof cites cases (including Kevin Cooper’s and Todd Willingham’s), and statistics to show just how wrong — morally, spiritually, and practically — the death penalty is. It is a powerful and emotional indictment of a punishment so barbaric it is incomprehensible that it wasn’t abolished in this country long ago.
Dear Supporters, A couple of years ago, campaigning with the New Hampshire Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, I met Republican State Sen. Kevin Avard, a good man who listened and gave the issue a lot of thought. He then voted with us on a bill to abolish state killing in his state that lost by one vote. To add insult to injury, Sen. Avard lost his seat in the
Charles Ray Finch left North Carolina’s Greene Correctional Institution in a wheelchair last Thursday, 42 years after first being sentenced to death for a crime he was wrongfully convicted of committing. Finch was released after a unanimous panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found in January that the “totality of the evidence, both old and new, would likely fail to convince any reasonable juror of his guilt beyond
Florida plans to kill Bobby Joe Long tomorrow for the murder of Michelle Sims in 1984, although he pleaded guilty to killing eight women and sexually assaulting dozens of others during eight months of that year. But Long had an abusive childhood and a traumatic brain injury and, as the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis: “Since his sentencing [1985], modern medicine has
(Tennessee is planning to execute Don Johnson tonight for the murder of his wife, Connie, in 1984. Johnson is a very different man from the one who walked onto death row all those years ago. He became a Seventh Day Adventist, and was ordained by that church as a deacon because of the ministry work he has been doing with other condemned prisoners, which includes Bible study classes. Church officials
Douglas Stankewitz, the longest serving prisoner on California’s death row, was re-sentenced to life without parole last Friday. Stankewitz, who is 60, was sentenced to death in 1978 when he was 19. In 2012, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Stankewitz’s death sentence, agreeing with a district court that he had had ineffective assistance of counsel during the penalty phase, the Fresno County DA’s office indicated it would
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