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
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
“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
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
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.
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
“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
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:
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
“Until I can be sure that everyone sentenced to death in Illinois is truly guilty, until I can be sure with moral certainty that no innocent man or woman is facing a lethal injection, no one will meet that fate,” then-Governor George Ryan said after announcing a moratorium in 2000. Ryan cited a series of articles in the Chicago Tribune that revealed a broken system, riddled by racism, wrongful convictions,
In her article, “This Is What Wrongful Conviction Does to a Family,” in Politico, Lara Bazelon looks at the arrest of two men for the 1982 rape and murder of Debbie Sue Carter in Oklahoma. But after Ron Williamson was sentenced to death, and Dennis Fritz to life without parole in 1988, DNA evidence exonerated both, and implicated another man, who was eventually sentenced to life without parole. The case rocked
In Texas, three men were executed in the space of four weeks: 43-year-old Alvin Braziel was executed on Tuesday for the 1993 murder of Douglas White during a robbery. The Houston Chronicle reports that defense attorneys attempted to obtain a stay based on a last-minute admission of prosecutorial misconduct, but both the trial court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the appeal, with two justices on the high
Thanks so much to all of you who have signed our petition to California Gov. Jerry Brown asking him to remove as many people as possible from Death Row before he leaves office in January. But if you haven’t yet signed it, here’s a video from DPF President Mike Farrell explaining why he thinks it’s important. The state Constitution allows the governor to exercise mercy by granting clemency and commuting
Representatives from Catholic and other organizations opposed to the death penalty delivered six thousand signatures to California Gov. Jerry Brown yesterday asking him to commute the sentences of the hundreds of men and women on death row before he leaves office. The effort, coordinated by the California Catholic Conference, involved delivering six thousand letters signed by individuals from around the state. A staff person in the governor’s office accepted the
There was much to celebrate after this week’s election, especially the strides made in criminal justice reform. In Louisiana, Amendment 2 passed easily, which means that a unanimous jury is now required for a conviction in a felony trial. Previously, a jury only needed 10 of 12 votes, even to sentence a defendant to life in prison. Amendment 4 passed in Florida, which means nearly 1.5 million former felons who
He spent 14 years, 10 of them on death row, and on Monday, Florida prosecutors announced they would not proceed with a retrial for Clemente Javier Aguirre for the murder of two people in 2004. An immigrant from Honduras with no criminal history, Aguirre was convicted of killing his former neighbors, Cheryl Williams and her mother, Carole Bareis, and was sentenced to death in 2006. His conviction was unanimously overturned
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case of 50-year-old Russell Bucklew, a Missouri death row prisoner who came within a few hours of his execution in March when the Court granted a stay, in a 5-4 decision, to give it time to study his appeal. Bucklew suffers from cavernous hemangioma, a rare medical condition that causes blood-filled tumors in his head, throat and lips. Because of
In Mississippi, a man who has been on death row for over 20 years, after being tried six times for a quadruple murder in 1996, will get a hearing in the U.S. Supreme Court. APM Reports, which has produced an 11-episode podcast on Flowers’ case, reports that the Court will review whether District Attorney Doug Evans deliberately excluded African-Americans from Flowers’ jury in each of his trials. In four of his
