In his op-ed in the Fort Worth Star Telegram, “It’s Wrong for an Imperfect System to Impose an Irreversible Punishment,” former district attorney Tim Cole notes
Tennessee’s nine-year break in executions ended in August when the state killed Billy Ray Irick by lethal injection. Last week, Edmund Zagorski was executed by
Edmund Zagorski was executed in Tennessee last night by electric chair, the first time in 11 years the state has used that method. The 63-year-old
When the state has gotten the go-ahead to execute a man by electrocuting him, it’s difficult to understand why they would fight a request by
It’s foolish to hope for any sort of measured or nuanced response from Donald Trump, but his thoughtless, knee-jerk, all-too-predictable immediate demand that the man accused
The Tennessean has a story today on how the state will test the electric chair it will use to kill Edmund Zagorski next Thursday. The
The majority of Americans no longer believe the death penalty is applied fairly. For the first time since Gallup polled on this issue in 2000,
There is nothing new about comics depicting tragedy. Comics and graphic novels have been covering serious topics for years. Art Spiegelman’s classic graphic novel, Maus,
Update: On October 10, 2018, the Malaysian government announced that the country will abolish the death penalty for all crimes. Around 1,200 people are on
Kenneth Clair, who spent more than 30 years on California’s death row before having his sentence reduced, is still fighting to prove his innocence. Clair was convicted of the murder of 25-year-old nanny Linda Rodgers in Santa Ana in November 1984, in spite of the fact that two witnesses say the man who killed her was white, and DNA evidence at the crime scene didn’t match his. He was sent
Richard Kamler, who died last year, was an activist and artist who used his skills to protest capital punishment in an unusual and highly effective way. For example, he recorded lions at the San Francisco Zoo, and in April 1992, on the night Robert Alton Harris was executed, Kamler took a boat out on San Francisco Bay near San Quentin Prison. As Sam Whiting in the San Francisco Chronicle reported
Three states, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Alabama, have recently given the go-ahead to execute prisoners using nitrogen gas, a new, untested, untried method of killing women and men – or, as Oklahoma State Representative Mike Christian refers to them, “these beasts.” Let that sink in for a moment, if you will. . . . Mr. Christian’s new law makes Oklahoma one of three states that may soon execute prisoners by placing
Just how old, how sick, or how mentally ill does a death row prisoner have to be for the government to opt not to execute him and let him die in prison? It’s a question that grows ever more pertinent as the men and women on death rows around the country grow older, suffering from the common physical and mental problems of aging, greatly exacerbated by the additional stressors of
Stating that there’s “a major gap in resources for lawyers who defend capital cases,” the American Bar Association is launching The Capital Clemency Resource Initiative, a project that it says will provide “state-specific information about clemency in death penalty states, plus past petitions, court decisions, academic papers and ABA policy on the subject.” The information lawyers will now have access to includes a manual, Representing Death-Sentenced Prisoners in Clemency: A
A new poll conducted by Quinnipiac University finds that American voters choose life without parole over the death penalty 51-37 percent, the first time a majority chose life over death since the poll first asked the question in 2004. It’s an important development because by including the option of life without parole, the survey shows that the majority opts for the latter. Too often, pollsters question voters about their support
In Georgia, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit declined to hear an appeal by Keith Tharpe that he was sentenced to death because he is African-American, saying he must first present the issue to state courts. In January, the U.S. Supreme Court directed the appeals court to review his sentence after his lawyers presented a post-verdict interview with one of Tharpe’s jurors in which he referred to
A collection of the writings of the late Rabbi Leonard Beerman, edited by David N.. Myers, can be found in The Eternal Dissident: Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman and the Radical Imperative to Think and Act, which will be released on May 16. (A free ebook version will also be available through Luminos at publication.) Rabbi Beerman, who was one of the founders of Death Penalty Focus, was considered one of
