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News Commentary Archive from 2004
- Archive
of News Commentary
See all CADP News Commentary links and
excerpts from the years 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003.
- About
Broken Links
- Bloodsworth:
The True Story of the First Death Row
Inmate Exonerated by DNA
Bloodsworth won his freedom from prison
in 1993 - after horrible suffering by
him, by his parents, by other loved ones
- only because of his uncommon persistence,
his parents' willingness to live in poverty
so they could finance his appeals, the
advances in DNA testing and lawyers who
truly cared. According to the author,
the prosecutors cared so little about justice
in the
Bloodsworth case that after his exoneration,
they did almost nothing to locate the
actual murderer until Bloodsworth himself
pushed them to act. Finally, law enforcement
agents ran the DNA sample through a database.
When they found the real killer, it turned
out he had struck again after Dawn Hamilton's
death, had been caught and was serving
prison time a few feet from Bloodsworth.
(9/12/04, Book
Review by The Denver Post)
Order
book from Amazon.com (and benefit CADP)
- Death
Penalty Losing Its Grip
It's probably too early to call it a
radical change, but there's a flicker
of hope that American society is coming
to think of capital punishment as a cruel
anachronism. Polls show about 80 percent
support for capital punishment, but a new
report has found that the number
of death verdicts hit a 27-year low last
year. Possible factors include the exoneration
of about 100 death-row inmates and the
fact that jurors now have the option
of imposing life without parole in 47
states. ... Despite support in public-opinion
surveys, jurors seem less enthusiastic
about capital punishment. "I'm not
surprised at the reluctance on the part
of American juries to impose the death
penalty," said
U.S. District Judge John Kane, who speculated
that some death-penalty jurors may hesitate
because of news reports and television
shows about errors in death-penalty cases.
It's hard to pin down the reason for
the drop, but Mark Silverstein, legal
director of the American Civil Liberties
Union in Colorado, noted that "we
certainly have seen more cases of people
who have been on death row for years
who are finally exonerated. ... Maybe
the public is more aware of the fallibility
of the criminal-justice system and the
fallibility of the human operators of
that system." ... The Post has opposed
capital punishment since 1965. Perhaps
growing antipathy for actually imposing
the death penalty will someday lead the
court to conclude that it has truly become
a "cruel
and unusual punishment" and ban
it altogether. (11/21/04, Editorial by
The Denver Post)
- Editorials
Around Country Note Growing Unease with
Death Penalty
Editorials in papers around the country have
noted that many Americans are rethinking
the death penalty because it is deeply flawed.
Among the recent editorial observations were
the following. (11/29/04, DPIC Update)
- Executions
in Decline
So is capital punishment an inevitable part
of life in the United States? Is it here
to stay, now and forever? Not necessarily.
A new year-end report from
the Death
Penalty Information Center reveals that
the number of executions in the United States
declined this year to 65. That's a 34 percent
drop since 1999, when the number peaked at
98. ... That's encouraging news for those
who share our view that the death penalty
is both wrong
as a matter of principle and ineffective
as a deterrent in practice. If a state rarely
uses the death penalty, it's reasonable to
ask why the punishment is needed at all -
particularly when the risk of executing an
innocent human being is so great. (12/30/03,
Editorial by The Daily Camera)
- Executioner's
Last Songs Vol. 2 and 3
Here's the The Pine Valley Cosmonauts playing
their old death card and raising a little more
hell and cash to help wean America off its
life threatening death penalty dependency.
On hearing Volume One, Illinois Governor George
Ryan spontaneously cleared Death Row and was
heard to whimper "Shit, those country
commies know their chops!!!" This leaves
us little doubt that this Two Disc Set sequel
portends oblivion for the hangmen that lurk
in the rest of the nation. ... This 2 record
set is bargain priced [$15.00], and all artists'
proceeds benefit the National Coalition Against
the Death Penalty. (Bloodshot Records)
- Garden
of Martyrs
In this powerful novel based on an actual
case, two Irish immigrants are arrested,
convicted and executed for the callous
murder of a traveler on the Boston Post
Road in 1806. Daley, a simple family
man with a young son, and Halligan, a
man with a checkered past and a lost
love, face their deaths bravely with
the help of a Catholic priest from France
with his own private shame. Victims of
anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic prejudice,
the tragedy of the Irishmen's execution
is underscored by the fact that modern
evidence has exonerated them of the crime.
(6/17/04, Michael
C. White)
Order book from Amazon.com (and benefit CADP).
- Good
News: Capital Punishment Continues
to Decline
One of the most over-covered news stories
of this year, and possibly of any year,
was the trial of Scott
Peterson. Hour after hour, month
after month, cable networks in particular
obsessed over Peterson, who eventually
received a death sentence in California
for the murder of his pregnant wife.
The endless coverage of Peterson's case
did focus national attention on the issue
of capital punishment, as jurors debated
whether to impose the death penalty or
life in prison without possibility of
parole. But it tended to obscure rather
than illuminate the larger story: a continuing
decline in the number of executions in
the United States. (12/27/04, Editorial
by The Daily Camera)
- NCADP
Launches Blog
The National Coalition to Abolish the
Death Penalty (NCADP)
has recently launched a new Web
log ("blog") devoted to
death penalty concerns. NCADP developed
its Abolish the Death Penalty blog "to
tell the personal stories of crime victims
and their loved ones, people on death
row and their loved ones and those activists
who are working toward abolition." The
blog's mission is "to put a human
face on the debate over capital punishment." (8/25/04,
CADP)
- Newspapers,
Opinion Leaders Call for End to Juvenile
Death Penalty
As the Supreme Court heard arguments
in the case of Roper v. Simmons on October
13, newspapers throughout the country
featured editorials and opinion pieces
calling on the U.S. to abandon the practice
of executing juvenile offenders. (10/18/04, DPIC Update)
- No
Justice in Executing Kids
Here's a scary thought: The Supreme Court
in the late '80s barred the execution of
juveniles 15 and younger and now will revisit
the issue of executing 16- and 17-year-olds
-- but perhaps only to nail down its past
approval of this barbarism, rather than to
rethink it. ... The United States is out
of step with just about every other nation
in persisting with the death penalty, but
on the matter of juvenile execution, it is
absolutely alone. No other nation officially
endorses the practice. ... Worrisomely, the
court's hardcore conservatives may be taking
up the Missouri case just to
keep a momentum against juvenile execution,
based on the retardation ruling, from developing
in lower courts. The Supreme Court review
aside, it says something about us -- and
what it says is not pretty -- that we
are the only nation that rejects the U.N.'s
Convention on the Rights of the Child and
that we do so just because we want to keep
killing children. (2/1/04, The Daily Camera.
News commentary by Tom Teepen.)
- Now That's Straight Talk
It's refreshing to hear a candidate for
high office break with the party line and
utter an independent thought. So we give
due credit to Republican U.S. Senate candidate
Pete Coors, for telling his supporters
what most of them probably didn't want
to hear: that he opposes the death penalty.
(10/7/04, Editorial by The Daily Camera)
- Waiting
to Die: Life on Death Row
Written by an inmate condemned to Arizona's
death row, this unique work describes in
powerful detail the challenging realities
for prisoners sentenced to die for their
crimes. Through a disturbing narrative and
rare glimpses into execution regulations,
including prison forms and documents, this
account reveals the core issues of one of
the most controversial and enduring social
issues in America today. Examining the rules
that govern every aspect of death row inmates'
life, this volume describes a world of horrendous
medical neglect, dangerous and taxing work
on chain gangs, inadequate food, and unrelenting
psychological abuse by the prison authorities.
A precise and sinister tale, it explores
the world of more than 3,500 condemned men
and women who will die through lethal injection
or a gas chamber. Order
book from Amazon.com (and benefit CADP) (10/04,
Amazon.com Book Description)
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