News and Developments: Articles

NEW RESOURCES: The Private Bar’s Efforts to Secure Proper Representation for those Facing Execution

Posted: October 27, 2008
in

Civil rights litigator and death penalty expert Ronald J. Tabak recently published “The Private Bar’s Efforts to Secure Proper Representation for those Facing Execution” in the Justice System Journal. The article presents an in-depth review of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) role in ensuring effective counsel in capital cases.

ARTICLES:The Story of a Death Row Inmate Who Wanted to Die

Posted: June 10, 2008
in

In 1996, Illinois Governor Jim Edgar commuted the death sentence of Guin Garcia to life without parole, even though Garcia herself had stopped fighting for her life. Garcia would have been the first woman executed in the U.S. in twelve years. She had been convicted of killing the man who had physically abused her, but she had dropped her appeals because she said she was done “begging for her life.” Chicago Sun-Times reporter Carol Marin followed Garcia's case after the commutation and recently wrote about the changes in Garcia's life.

ARTICLES: Time Magazine: "This weighty moral issue. . . involves a lot of winging it.”

Posted: January 08, 2008
in

A recent article in Time Magazine by Editor-at-large David Von Drehle examines the current state of the death penalty in the United States at a time when the Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of the most widely used method of execution--lethal injection. Von Drehle writes, “In a perfect world, perhaps, the government wouldn't wait 30 years and several hundred executions to determine whether an execution method makes sense. But the world of capital punishment has never been that sort of place.