Another Innocent Man Executed?
May 4, 2020
By Jessica S. Henry Walter “Arkie” Barton is scheduled to be executed by the State of Missouri on Tuesday, May 19th. Missouri may well be
By Jessica S. Henry Walter “Arkie” Barton is scheduled to be executed by the State of Missouri on Tuesday, May 19th. Missouri may well be
A lawyer for one of the five men the Trump Administration announced it plans to execute in December and January is challenging the legality of
“Justice Thurgood Marshall was correct in 1972 when he predicted that if people were better informed about the death penalty, they would reject it. That
In his book, book, Six Amendments, U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens called for revising six of the amendments to the Constitution, including the
Death Penalty Focus has filed an amicus letter in support of a motion filed last month by death penalty lawyer and DPF board member Robert
“Anyone who claims to believe in the sanctity of life, truth, or justice cannot seriously defend the application of the death penalty in Pennsylvania,” Philadelphia
In Tennessee, the Tennessean reports Stephen West was executed by electric chair last night. He opted for electrocution over lethal injection, a choice available to
In his multi-part series, “We need to fix forensics. But how?” in the Washington Post, Radley Balko poses six questions to 14 experts who work
Kevin Cooper has been on San Quentin’s death row for 33 years for a quadruple murder he didn’t commit. As we reported in the January Focus, the legions of people who believe in his innocence include Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge William A. Fletcher, former American Bar Association President Paulette Brown, at least 11 federal court judges, and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. We can now add the
Three states inched closer to repealing their death penalty laws this year. Washington, Utah, and New Hampshire have been debating repeal bills in the most recent legislative session, but so far, two have come up short, and one is still pending. In New Hampshire on Monday, the Senate will debate a bill that would repeal the death penalty and replace it with a sentence of life without parole. SB 593
In Ohio, Alva Campbell was found dead in his cell at Chillicothe Correctional Institution last Saturday, four months after he was removed from the state’s execution chamber because the execution team couldn’t find a viable vein in which to inject its lethal drugs. Campbell was 69. The Columbus Dispatch reports that a spokesperson for the Ohio Dept. of Rehabilitation and Correction said “there was no evidence of foul play and
In his article, “When Can You Buy a Gun, Vote, or Be Sentenced to Death? Science Suggests U.S. Should Revise Legal Age Limits”, in The Conversation, Temple University psychology professor Laurence Steinberg explains how recent research on adolescent psychological and brain development “provides a compelling basis for changing our laws” to “increasing the minimum age for purchasing firearms, lowering the voting age, and raising the age of eligibility for capital
The State of Michigan is the only state to have a death penalty ban in its constitution. That ban was enshrined 116 years after the state became the first English-speaking government to abolish capital punishment for murder and lesser crimes in 1846. The person responsible for making it part of the constitution? Eugene Wanger, author of Fighting the Death Penalty: A Fifty-Year Journey of Argument and Persuasion. The result is
February 14, 2018 The Honorable Edmund G. Brown Governor State of California State Capitol, Suite 1173 Sacramento, CA 95814 Dear Governor Brown, We write to urge that you act affirmatively on Kevin Cooper’s pending clemency petition. We are law school deans representing the University of California Berkeley School of Law, Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, Santa Clara School of Law, and the University of San Francisco School
A federal judge told Alabama prison officials on Tuesday to preserve all evidence related to last week’s botched execution of Doyle Lee Hamm, CNN reported. Chief U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre also ordered the corrections department to allow Hamm a full medical exam. The two-and-a-half hour ordeal last Thursday night was so botched it left Hamm “bruised, punctured, and limping from the attempted execution,” his attorney, Bernard Harcourt, wrote. What
Minutes before he was scheduled to be executed, Thomas Whitaker’s sentence was commuted to life without parole yesterday by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. In a statement, the governor cited several reasons for his decision. He noted that while Whitaker did not actually fire the gun that killed his mother and brother, and injured his father, he was sentenced to death while the actual gunman was not. He also cited the
Today, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously to recommend clemency for Thomas Whitaker. Whitaker is scheduled to be executed on Thursday for his role in arranging the murders of his mother and brother. His father also was shot in the ambush and survived; he has forgiven his son and has been asking for clemency for him. Reuters reports that, at a news conference after the board’s recommendation,