Florida Governor Charlie Crist recently chose two death row inmates for execution from among many eligible prisoners on the state’s death row, but no reasons were given for his choice. He joins a long line of Florida governors who made the decision of who lives and who dies without explanation of their selection method. "I don't know how they decide," said John Marek's lawyer, Marty McClain, a veteran death-row attorney who has defended hundreds of inmates. (Marek was one of those given an execution date, but the date was stayed by the courts.) "Over the years I have wanted to know the answer to that question." Florida determines the order of execution by the Governor’s discretion, whereas other states, such as Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, and California, place the responsibility with the court system. Defense attorneys have little grounds to challenge this unregulated and secretive process. "It's the epitome of how arbitrary it is," said Elisabeth Semel, director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California- Berkeley.
According to the Chicago Tribune, the Texas Forensic Science Commission has received a report from a nationally known fire scientist that casts doubt on the guilt of Cameron Todd Willingham (pictured) who was executed in Texas in February 2004. Craig Beyler of Hughes Associates conducted a review for the Commission of the evidence used to convict Willingham of murder by arson, which led to his death sentence. Beyler concluded the Texas fire investigators had no basis to rule that a deadly house fire that killed Willingham's children was an arson. His report mirrors what other renowned experts have found over the past several years and is one step in a more thorough review being conducted by the Science Commission. Experts for the Chicago Tribune and the Innocence Project in New York have similarly concluded that the original investigators relied on outdated theories in calling the fire an arson.
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Daniel Wade Moore was acquitted of all charges by a jury in Alabama on May 14. Moore was originally found guilty of the murder and sexual assault of Karen Tipton in 2002. The judge overruled the jury’s recommendation of a life sentence and instead sentenced him to death in January 2003, calling the murder one of the worst ever in the county. A new trial was ordered in 2003 because of evidence withheld by the prosecution. A second trial in 2008 ended in a mistrial with the jury deadlocked at 8-4 for acquittal. (Moore is the 133rd person to be exonerated and freed from death row since 1973, according to DPIC's record of exonerations.)