Two weeks after Gov. Newsom issued an Executive Order imposing a moratorium, two California Supreme Court justices issued their own critique of the death penalty system,
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a jury selection bias case last month in which Mississippi death row prisoner Curtis Flowers, an African-American,
On Thursday, the Supreme Court considered whether to take the case of a South Dakota death row prisoner who maintains he was sentenced to death
Dear Governor Newsom, Do you have ANY IDEA how refreshing it is to the SOUL to have a politician seek public office, who promises to
If Alabama were to go ahead with its plan to execute 68-year-old Vernon Madison, he wouldn’t know why. Because of several strokes over the past
The headlines say it all. “The Stench of Prejudice in Keith Tharpe’s Death Sentence,” in the New York Times. “A juror used the N-word. Did
In the space of one week last month, two men walked out of prison, each of whom had spent decades on death row. Freddie Lee
“Yay Gavin Newsom. I’m very thankful to him for having the courage, the guts, to stand up and say before California murders anyone on my
In New Hampshire on Thursday, by a veto-proof vote of 279-88, the House repealed the state’s death penalty and replaced it with a sentence of
Tickets are still available for our event next Sunday, September 23, in Los Angeles, when we will honor the Reverend James Lawson, a civil rights icon whom Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called “The leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world,” with the Death Penalty Focus Lifetime Achievement Award. The Lifetime Achievement Award is in recognition of a person’s “lifelong dedication to civil rights, criminal and social justice, and the
“The Penalty,” the acclaimed documentary that goes behind the scenes of some of the biggest headlines in the recent history of America’s death penalty, will be premiering in several California cities at this month. The film documents a state’s scramble to develop a lethal injection protocol and an attorney desperate to prevent a “botched” and torturous execution; a man’s attempts to put his life back together after spending 15 years
The Washington Post this week reported on a study commissioned by the National Registry of Exonerations that found that since 1989, some 2,000 exonerees spent a combined 20 thousand years in prison. The report, which hasn’t been published yet — Washington Post reporter Radley Balko was given an advance copy — provides additional evidence of how pervasive racism is in our criminal justice system, but also reveals some surprising findings, including that:
A doctor who reviewed statements from witnesses to last month’s execution of Billy Ray Irick in Tennessee stated in court filings that their accounts indicate Irick “experienced the feeling of choking, drowning in his own fluids, suffocating, being buried alive, and the burning sensation caused by the injection of the potassium chloride.” The Tennessean reports that Dr. David Lubarsky also said that the witnesses’ statement made it clear that midazolam, the first
In New Hampshire, the Senate failed to override Gov. Chris Sununu’s veto of a death penalty repeal bill. The vote was 14-10, just short of the two-thirds majority needed. New Hampshire hasn’t executed anyone since 1939, and has only one person on death row. The bill would not have applied retroactively. New Hampshire is the only state in New England to still have the death penalty. A South Dakota man whose
In its editorial, “Gov. Brown Needs to Speed Up the Review Process for Death Row Inmate Kevin Cooper,” the LA TImes editorial board says that death row prisoner Kevin Cooper’s request for advanced DNA testing of evidence from the quadruple murder he was convicted of committing in San Bernardino County in 1985, as well as an innocence hearing, should be fast-tracked since Gov. Jerry Brown will be leaving office in
Nebraska executed its first prisoner in 21 years today. The state killed Carey Dean Moore with a four-drug lethal injection cocktail that included fentanyl – the first time that drug has ever been used in an execution in the U.S. The 60-year-old Moore was sentenced to death for the 1979 murder of two Omaha cab drivers, Reuel Van Ness and Maynard Helgeland. The Nebraska legislature abolished the death penalty in
When Pope Francis declared last week that “the death penalty is inadmissible,” because it is “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” and vowed that the church will work for its “abolition worldwide,” he made it impossible from this point forward for Catholic supporters of this barbaric punishment to stake their position on the moral high ground of the Church. His statement is now official doctrine and
