Reiss Clauson-Wolf is a writer/producer from Philadelphia. He attended Germantown Friends School, and thus spent his formative years being schooled in the Quaker tradition of practiced nonviolence. He has written for CBS, MRC, and Hulu, among others.
Dan Kupetz is the Head of Entertainment Business and Legal Affairs at Range Media Partners, a Santa Monica-based management and production company. Dan has over 25 years of experience in the entertainment industry, including 15 years as EVP and Head of Business Affairs at CBS Studios.
Dan earned his BA in History from UC Berkeley; a Master’s degree in International Relations from Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies; and a law degree from UCLA School of Law.
His commitment to social justice work and death penalty abolition is influenced by the Jewish precept of tikkun olam (repairing the world), and inspired by his daughter Sophie’s work in indigent and capital defense, and his daughter Zoe’s work as a history teacher and activist.
Mark Kimber is the past-President of the Salinas Steinbeck Rotary Club, the founder of a travel agency in Salinas, a volunteer with the Marine Mammal Center, and a certified skydiving instructor.
Garland Allen is the former Chicago Market Leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s state and local tax consulting practice and before that was a tax partner in the Chicago law firm of Hopkins & Sutter (now Foley & Lardner).
Stephen F. Rohde is a constitutional lawyer, lecturer, writer and political activist. He is chair emeritus of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California; immediate past chair of Bend the Arc, a Jewish Partnership for Justice; past president of the Beverly Hills Bar Association; and is a founder of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace.
Stacy L. Mallicoat is a Professor of Criminal Justice at California State University, Fullerton. Her research focuses on issues of public opinion and the death penalty.
Robert Sanger has been a criminal defense lawyer in Santa Barbara for over 40 years and has defended people charged with capital offenses since the reinstitution of the death penalty in California. He is Past President of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice (CACJ), a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and teaches law school classes in Forensic Science.
Beth Webb is a member of California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and a tireless advocate of abolition. In 2011, her sister, Laura, was killed, and her mother, Hattie, was wounded in the Salon Meritage Shooting in Seal Beach, CA. Beth worked with the other victims’ family members to oppose the death penalty in the resulting trial, based on her opposition to the practice and on the fact that it would cause the families to endure a painful and unending litigation process. Beth even spoke to the Orange County District Attorney to let him know her opposition to the death penalty, although the DA rebuffed her while still continuing to tout his “victims’ rights” bona fides. In 2017, the defendant was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole because the judge presiding over the case found that the corruption of the OCDA’s office and OC Sheriff’s Department had been so pervasive that he could not guarantee a Constitutional sentencing hearing. In 2016, Beth was one of the most forceful campaigners for Prop. 62, a statewide ballot initiative that nearly abolished the death penalty in California. She continues to be active in the fight to end the death penalty and to challenge corrupt prosecutors at the local level.”
Mike Farrell is an actor and a human rights and social justice advocate. He has traveled the country, speaking, writing and lobbying against the death penalty for over three decades and has been president of the board of directors of Death Penalty Focus for over 20 years.
In this month’s Focus, we wrote about a writ petition a coalition of prominent civil rights and legal organizations filed at the CA Supreme Court earlier this month. The writ maintains that “Extensive empirical evidence demonstrates that California’s capital punishment scheme is administered in a racially discriminatory manner and violates the equal protection provisions of the state Constitution.” The petition asks the Court to declare California’s capital sentencing scheme invalid
At least seven young men, all of whom were sentenced to death for so-called crimes committed when they were between the ages of 14-17 and who are members of the Shi’a religious minority, are at imminent risk of execution in Saudi Arabia, the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights announced today. In April 2020, the government said that it was suspending all death sentences against individuals who were under the
One hundred-ninety-seven individuals sentenced to die have been exonerated in the U.S. since 1973. Melissa Lucio, on Texas death row since 2008 for a crime no reasonable person ever believed she committed, could and should be the 198th. Lucio, now 55, was arrested in 2007 for the murder of her two-year-old daughter, Mariah, despite forensic and eyewitness evidence that her daughter died from a head injury she suffered in a
CA Gov. Gavin Newsom grants 37 pardons; 18 commutations Late last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he pardoned 37 individuals and commuted the sentences of 18 others because “clemency [is] an important part of the criminal justice system that can incentivize accountability and rehabilitation, increase public safety by removing counterproductive barriers to successful reentry, correct unjust results in the legal system, and address the health needs of incarcerated people
“In states where the death penalty does exist, it shouldn’t be cruel, it shouldn’t be unusual (and) it definitely shouldn’t be experimental, like nitrogen hypoxia is,” Alabama State Rep. Neil Rafferty stated when he introduced HB 248, which would prevent the state from executing any more people using nitrogen gas, the Alabama Reflector reports. In January, the state killed Kenneth Smith using nitrogen gas, the first time a state has
Fifty-four-year-old Daniel Gwynn was freed from Pennsylvania’s death row on February 29, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office announced. He served nearly 30 years for a crime he didn’t commit. Gwynn was convicted of the 1994 arson murder of Marsha Smith based on false witness identification, Gwynn’s false confession, and withheld evidence. Police testified that witnesses identified Gwynn in a photo lineup, but the photos were never turned over to
Last Wednesday, the Oklahoma House Criminal Justice and Corrections Committee cleared House Bill 3138, the Death Penalty Moratorium Act, making it eligible to be heard on the House floor, Oklahoma Watch reports. The bill was introduced by Republican Rep. Kevin McDugle, who, although a death penalty supporter, has been troubled by several cases in which individuals were sentenced to death, most prominently Richard Glossip’s. “We cannot trust the system, period,
In this powerful and poignant update, Sister Helen Prejean, fueled by her outrage at the barbarism of capital punishment and her unwavering commitment to its abolition, shares the final, tragic moments of Ivan’s life through a lens filled with both tender compassion and fervent resolve. This is Sister Prejean’s firsthand account, deeply personal yet universally resonant, urging us to see beyond the immediate tragedy to the larger call to action
Idaho corrections officials attempted to kill 73-year-old Thomas Creech today, but after an hour of repeated attempts to find a vein for its lethal injection drugs, they called it off. It was the state’s first execution attempt since 2012. “We are angered but not surprised that the State of Idaho botched the execution,” Creech’s lawyers said in a statement after the attempt, according to the New York Times. “This is