The Legislature is considering a bill to repeal Louisiana’s death penalty. As someone who was nearly executed for a crime I didn’t commit, I hope our legislators recognize that as long as we have a death penalty we risk executing innocent people.
Author Archives: admin
ABA launches clemency information clearinghouse for death penalty cases
In 2015, ABA attorneys noticed a major gap in resources for lawyers who defend capital cases: clemency information. Defendants who have exhausted their direct appeals and habeas petition rights often ask governors for mercy – but there wasn’t a lot of information available about how to do that effectively.
“In every state that we studied, there were insignificant resources for and attention paid to clemency, leaving it … too hollow to be comfortable for our profession,” says Misty Thomas, chief counsel for the Death Penalty Due Process Project. Thomas notes that the ABA has no position on the death penalty – but “if we’re going to have the death penalty, every single stage should be robust and meaningful.”
Continue reading: ABA Journal
John Grisham: Eight reasons for America’s shameful number of wrongful convictions
It is too easy to convict an innocent person.
The rate of wrongful convictions in the United States is estimated to be somewhere between 2% to 10%. That may sound low, but when applied to a prison population of 2.3 million, the numbers become staggering. Can there really be 46,000 to 230,000 innocent people locked away? Those of us who are involved in exoneration work firmly believe so.
Read more: LA Times
If SC botches an execution, state doesn’t have to show what went wrong
A little-known S.C. law, on the books for nearly a decade, exempts the state from performing an autopsy on a death-row inmate who has been executed.
That means if a lethal-injection execution doesn’t go according to plan, the state is not required to conduct an autopsy, a procedure that could shed light on what went wrong.
Read more: The State
Death penalty process will become secret if South Carolina’s governor gets his way
If South Carolina doesn’t pass a law to keep the drugs it uses for lethal injections a secret, the state won’t be able to carry out its first execution in six years on Dec. 1. Or at least that’s what South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster spent the week telling state lawmakers. . . .
There’s just one problem: The scheduled execution of Bobby Stone, 52, on Dec. 1 was never going to happen because a federal court hasn’t reviewed his case yet. McMaster and Sterling created a false sense of urgency to publicly call for a law that would make much of the death penalty procedure in South Carolina a secret. Stone’s execution was stayed — as expected — on Tuesday.
Continue reading: Vice
At Guantánamo, a Death Penalty Case Without a Death Penalty Lawyer
By Cassandra Stubbs, Director, ACLU Capital Punishment Project November 14, 2017
The Guantanamo military commissions, the scheme created by the government to try 9/11 and other detainees, have devolved into an unacceptable and alarming assault on defense lawyers attempting to provide fair representation to their clients.
Continue reading: ACLU
The Unlikely Exoneration of Henry McCollum
The problem of innocence in death penalty cases
By Brandon L. Garrett
The American death penalty has a big innocence problem, and it is not going away. The events of last week show why. The Center for Death Penalty Litigation
Most American Indian tribes opt out of federal death penalty
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — In a heinous case on the Navajo Nation, an 11-year-old girl was lured into a van, sexually assaulted and killed. The man who has admitted responsibility is not facing the death penalty — and the tribe isn’t seeking it.
American Indian tribes for decades have been able to tell federal prosecutors if they want a death sentence considered for certain crimes on their land. Nearly all have rejected that option.
Tribes and legal experts say the decision goes back to culture and tradition, past treatment of American Indians and fairness in the justice system. Continue reading: Minneapolis Star Tribune
A Top Lawyer Has Asked The Supreme Court To Hear A Major Death Penalty Case
In a new filing, Neal Katyal is asking the high court to consider Arizona’s death penalty law — and whether the death penalty itself is unconstitutional. Buzzfeed
A Remorseful Executioner Fights to Abolish the Death Penalty
Frank Thompson oversaw the only two executions Oregon has completed in the last half decade. Now he works to abolish the death penalty. WNYC.org