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.
“After the execution of 13 federal prisoners by the Trump administration last year, we knew we had to redouble our efforts to abolish the death
In “The Trump Executions,” in a University of Texas Law, Public Law Research Paper, Lee Kovarsky analyzes the Trump Administration’s killing spree from July 2020 to January
In California, a 22-year-old man who pleaded guilty to a fatal shooting at a San Diego synagogue in April 2019 will be sentenced to life
Support for the death penalty declined to 60% from 2020 when 65% were in favor, although a majority of Americans still support capital punishment “despite
“Everyone has a breaking point. Anyone can be convinced to confess, to lie. And it’s not only that they can but they do it at
It’s called the Golden Rule argument because it’s used by prosecutors to put jurors in the shoes of the victim. And according to Pepperdine Caruso
“I now believe that the death penalty should absolutely not be a punishment delivered by the state of Florida or for that matter, any place in the
Julius Jones was arrested in 1999 and sent to Oklahoma’s death row three years later for a carjacking murder it’s likely he didn’t commit. Now, for the first time in 19 years, there is reason to hope that justice will finally be done in his case. The U.S. Supreme Court said last week that it will review a petition filed last November by Jones’ lawyers. The petition is asking the
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