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National News
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of National News
See all CADP National News links and
excerpts from the years 2000 | 2001 | 2002
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- CA: Democrats
Put Death Penalty Replacement in Platform
The California Democratic Party Platform
for 2010 now states: To promote safe communities,
California Democrats will: ... Replace
the death penalty with a term of permanent
incarceration, which will serve to protect
the public, provide swift and certain justice
for victims' families, and save the state
an estimated $1 billion over the next five
years. (4/18/10, ACLU of Northern California)
- GA: Troy Davis Evidentiary Hearing Set
for June
Federal District Court Judge William Moore
set a date in June, 2010 for the evidentiary
hearing regarding Troy Davis' claim
of actual innocence. Davis filed an original
habeas corpus petition with the U.S. Supreme
Court in 2009 asserting that new evidence
from witnesses who had recanted their trial
testimony established his innocence.
(5/3/10, DPIC Update)
- KY: Anti-Death Penalty Movement Wooing
Conservatives
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Roy Brown seems like a rarity - a conservative who's against
the death penalty. But to Brown, a state senator and the 2008 Republican nominee
for governor of Montana, the philosophy aligns perfectly with conservative ideology.
He's one of the more high-profile figures reaching out to other social and fiscal
conservatives, hoping to create a bipartisan movement against capital punishment. "I
believe that life is precious from the womb to a natural death," Brown said. (1/18/10,
Lexington Herald-Leader)
- NC: Video Footage Released of Execution
Facility
Captured on film, the warden of North Carolina's
Central Prison (Marvin Polk) narrates the
preparation and final hours before an execution
in Raleigh, where the state execution facilities
are located. 3/22/10,
Images of the Death Penalty)
- NY: DNA Clears Man Wrongly Convicted
of Murder
A New York truck driver, Frank Sterling,
who spent nearly 19 years in prison for
murder, was released on April 28, after
testing of DNA found in the victim's clothing
excluded him as the killer. (5/3/10, DPIC Update)
- OH:
Help Save Kevin Keith
Kevin Keith is a 46-year-old man currently
on death row in the state of Ohio. Keith
is scheduled to be put to death on September
15, in spite of overwhelming evidence
that he is an innocent man. Groups including
the Ohio Innocence Project, the National
Innocence Network, and a group of leading
eyewitness and memory experts are petitioning to
urge the Ohio Parole Board and Gov. Ted
Strickland to grant clemency to Kevin
Keith. (7/20/10, ACLU Blog of Rights)
- OH: After 20 Years, Ohio Death Row Inmate
May Be Exonerated
The court had ruled in 2006 that state prosecutors
improperly withheld evidence about their
star witness that could have exonerated D'Ambrosio
at his 1989 trial.
(3/8/10,
CNN.com)
- OK: Oklahoma City Bombing Victim's Father
Says Executions are Not Part of the Healing
Process
Bud Welch, father of Julie Welch who was
killed in the Oklahoma City Bombing, recently
appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show, just
a few days before the 15th anniversary of
the bombing in Oklahoma. Welch, who is the
president of Murder Victims' Familes for
Human Rights, has been a long-time opponent
of the death penalty and has said that executions
are more often "staged political events" instead
of a part of the healing process for victims.
(4/26/10, DPIC Update)
- TN: Arbitrariness Shown in Different
Outcomes in Similar Murder Cases
Gaile Owens and Mary Winkler
are two women who committed similar crimes
under similar circumstances in Tennessee.
Both women suffered from abuse from the
spouses they killed, and both were examined
by the same psychologist, twenty years
apart. The psychologist said both women
suffered from battered woman's syndrome.
... One is now free and has
custody of her children. Owens is on death
row, awaiting execution by lethal injection.
(1/4/10, DPIC Update)
- TX:
Judge Rules Death Penalty Unconstitutional
Houston District Judge Kevin Fine granted
a pretrial motion in a capital case and
declared the death penalty in Texas unconstitutional.
Judge Fine said the state's law violates
a defendant’s right to due process
because of the risk of executing an innocent
person.
(3/8/10,
CNN.com)
- TX: Inmate Facing Execution Denied DNA
Testing
Henry Skinner is scheduled for execution
in Texas on February 24 despite the lack
of DNA testing of critical evidence from
the crime scene that could lead to his exoneration.
(2/8/10, DPIC Update)
- TX: Texas to Execute Man 32 Years After
the Crime; Many Say He's Not the Same Person
David Powell, who was sentenced
to death in 1978 for the shooting of Austin
police officer Ralph Ablanedo,
faces execution in Texas on June 15. During
his 30 years on death row, Powell has shown
sincere remorse and regret for his actions.
... Although some police officers in Austin
continue to support Powell's execution, at
least one officer has said Powell is no longer
the same person who committed the murder.
(6/7/10, DPIC Update)
- USA:
Why Someone Might Confess to a Crime
He Did Not Commit
More often than many realize,
innocent people falsely confess to crimes
they did not commit, according to a recent
review in the Chicago Tribune. For example,
Kevin Fox, was accused of sexually assaulting
and murdering his 3-year-old daughter in
Illinois. He confessed to the crime after
spending 14 hours in interrogation, during
which police ignored his requests for a
lawyer and told him that they would arrange
for inmates to rape him in jail. Fox was
later released after DNA evidence excluded
him as a suspect, and another man was subsequently
charged with the crime. (7/19/10, DPIC Update) - USA:
The Slow Death of the Death Penalty?
As
Capital Punishment Is Used Less Often,
Arguments Persist Over its Validity - and
Death Row Inmates Continue to Wait. When
it comes to issues of crime and Punishment.
the stakes are never higher than when
the crime is murder, and the punishment
is death. Opinion about capital punishment
is sharply divided in the United States,
and the debate is playing out right now
in two very different Death Row cases.
(CBS News, 6/13/10)
- USA:
American Board of Anesthesiologists Bars
Participation in Executions
The American Board of Anesthesiologists (ABA),
representing 40,000 members, recently ruled
that it will revoke the certification of
any member who participates in an execution
by lethal injection. Most hospitals require
board certification for their anesthesiologists.
According to the board secretary Mark Rockoff,
the decision reflects the ABA's belief that
anesthesiologists are "healers, not
executioners."
(5/10/10, DPIC Update)
- USA:
Death Row Inmates' Long Wait for Execution
May Be Second Punishment
The AFP recently examined the time an inmate
spends on death row between sentencing and
execution and questioned if inmates are being
punished twice with long-term imprisonment
and execution. (4/26/10, DPIC Update)
- USA:
Just or Not, Cost of Death Penalty Is
a Killer for State Budgets
Capital murder trials and death row boondoggles
are wreaking havoc on budgets across the
country as many states are now rethinking
the death penalty, which is enormously
costly and rarely imposed even after successful
prosecutions. Every time a killer is sentenced
to die, a school closes. That is the broad
assessment of a growing number of studies
taking a cold, hard look at how much the
death penalty costs in the 35 states that
still have it. Forget justice, morality,
the possibility of killing an innocent
man or any of the traditional arguments
that have been part of the public debate
over the death penalty. The new one is
this: The cost of killing killers is killing
us. (3/27/10, Fox News.com)
- USA:
Debating the Cost of Capital Punishment
As cash-strapped states consider the high
cost of sentencing prisoners to death,
capital punishment has fallen on hard times.
In New Mexico, which voted to abolish the
death penalty last year, State Rep. Gail
Chasey (D., Albuquerque) specifically noted
the tax dollars that would be saved. “We
can put that money toward enhancing law
enforcement, public works, you name it,” she
said. In 2009, 10 other states considered
ending capital punishment. In New Jersey,
which halted executions in 2007, a commission
found that switching a single condemned
inmate’s sentence to life without
parole would save the state $1.3 million
in incarceration costs alone, because death-row
inmates receive special housing and security.
Repealing the death penalty in North Carolina,
where 169 prisoners are on death row, could
save that state $11 million a year in incarceration
costs and legal fees associated with the
extensive appeals process, according to
a study published in American Law and Economics
Review in December.
(1/31/10, Parade Magazine) - USA:
American Police Beat Reports "Death
Penalty Comes with a Hefty Price Tag"
A recent article in the American Police Beat
highlights the concerns that police chiefs
have with the costs and ineffectiveness of
capital punishment. The article notes, "The
problem, according to the police chiefs is
the fact that capital punishment is costing
states hundreds of millions of dollars for
relatively few executions and nothing in
the way of crime deterrence.
(1/11/10, DPIC Update)
- USA: Group Gives Up Death Penalty
Work
Last fall, the American Law Institute, which
created the intellectual framework for the
modern capital justice system almost 50 years
ago, pronounced its project a failure and
walked away from it. There were other important
death penalty developments last year: the
number of death sentences continued to fall,
Ohio switched to a single chemical for lethal
injections and New Mexico repealed its death
penalty entirely. But not one of them was
as significant as the institute’s move,
which represents a tectonic shift in legal
theory. (1/4/10, New York Times)
- USA:
More Innocence Network Exonerations in
2009
Twenty-seven people were exonerated and
released from prison this year, including
some who had been on death row, according
to a new report from The Innocence Project,
a national litigation and public policy
organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully
convicted people. The 27 exonerees served
a combined 421 years in prison for crimes
they did not commit. (1/4/10, DPIC Update)
- UT: Utah Religious Leaders Express Concerns
about the Death Penalty in Anticipation
of Firing Squad Execution
The upcoming execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner,
who has opted to be killed by a firing squad
in Utah on June 18, has attracted the attention
of many people of faith in the state. Hours
before Gardner's execution, prominent religious
leaders will gather for a vigil to protest
the execution. Religious leaders from groups
often associated with being supportive of
the death penalty have recently voiced concerns
about the practice.
(6/14/10, DPIC Update)
- UT: Murder Victim's Family in Utah Opposes
Upcoming Execution
Family members of the victim whom Ronnie
Lee Gardner killed in Utah are now asking
that his life be spared. Gardner's attorneys
have requested a clemency hearing and the
family members of the victim, Michael Burdell,
would be called to testify in favor of
sparing Gardner's life. Gardner has chosen
to be executed by firing squad. "Knowing
Michael, as I did, he would not want Ronnie
Lee to be executed," said Donna Nu,
Burdell's former girlfriend at a court
hearing recently. "Further, he would
not want to be the reason Ronnie Lee is
executed." (5/10/10, DPIC Update)
- VA: Troubling the Waters Against the
Death Penalty
Lynn Greer will be swimming to make a point - to remind us of the risk of executing
an innocent person. And she will be raising funds for VADP to help them eliminate
that risk, by ending the death penalty in Virginia once and for all. (7/16/10,
The Huffington Post)
- VA:
Anatomy of an Execution
A new book authored by Todd Peppers and
Laura Trevvett Anderson, "Anatomy
of An Execution," follows the story
of Douglas Christopher Thomas, a juvenile
offender who was executed in Virginia in
2000. ... The authors explore a variety
of death penalty issues surrounding the
case, including the quality of court-appointed
counsel, conditions on death row, and the
reasons for excluding the execution of
juveniles. (1/11/10, DPIC Update)
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