On April 20, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles reduced the death sentence of Daniel Greene (pictured) to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Board had stayed Greene's execution, which was set for April 19, in order to further consider his clemency petition. Greene's petition included letters from several members of the Taylor County community, where the murder occurred, urging the Board to spare Greene's life. Among the letters was one from a former correctional officer, Randy Foster, who called Greene "as fine a man as I have ever met in my life," and said, "He is not like anyone else on death row. Daniel Greene is the type of person you want for an inmate. He has never given me (or anyone else as far as I know) even the hint of a problem." In his own letter to the Board, Greene apologized for the pain he caused the victim's family and said, "I was on drugs at the time, but I took the drugs with my hands, and I take the responsibility. That choice to do drugs and what I did after were the worst mistakes of my life. I do not blame the drugs. I blame myself for everything." This was the second clemency granted nationally in 2012 and the eighth granted in Georgia since 1976.
Al Jazeera recently released a video of an interview with former Oklahoma death-row inmate Michael Selsor (pictured). Selsor was the most recent person executed in the U.S. and probably the inmate who served the longest time between conviction and execution of anyone in U.S. history. He was first sentenced to death in 1976 for murder and was imprisoned over 36 years prior to his execution on May 1, 2012. Although his sentence was reduced to life when Oklahoma's death penalty was overturned in 1976, he was re-sentenced to death for the same crime in 1998. The interview was conducted in 2010 and was the only interview Selsor granted. When asked about the difference between the death penalty and life without parole, Selsor said, “The only difference between death and life without parole is one you kill me now, the other one you kill me later. There's not even a shred of hope. There's no need to even try to muster up a seed of hope because you're just gonna die of old age in here....With the death penalty sentence I'm entitled to more appeals - the government's gonna pay for it. I don't have to do it myself if I don't have the money for a lawyer which I don't have. Instead I'm relying on public defenders to do my appeals." Selsor was also asked about how he was handling his inevitable execution: “I'm not gonna beg 'em to spare my life. I'll try to keep my head up with a little bit of dignity, and I'm gonna be buried out on Periwood Hill.” 
A new book published in electronic format, The Death Penalty Failed Experiment: From Gary Graham to Troy Davis in Context by Diann Rust-Tierney, examines the problem of arbitrariness in the death penalty since its reinstatement in 1976. Through an analysis of the cases of Gary Graham and Troy Davis, the author argues that race, wealth and geography play a more significant role in determining who faces capital punishment than the facts of the crime itself. Both defendants had significant claims of innocence; both were black defendants who were ultimately executed in the South; in both cases, the victim in the underlying murder was white. Graham was executed in Texas in 2000 and Davis was executed in Georgia in 2011. Rust-Tierney writes, “How do you administer the most severe punishment imaginable in a manner that is accurate, free from bias and demonstrably fair? Until we are all seen and treated as equal, we cannot afford to keep capital punishment.” Ms. Rust-Tierney is an attorney and Executive Director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. 
A recent editorial in the New York Times called Connecticut's decision to repeal the death penalty part of "a growing movement against capital punishment." The editorial attributed the trend away from the death penalty to new research that shows "gross injustice in its application and enormous costs in continuing to impose it." The problem of arbitrariness recently came to light in Connecticut, where "a powerful, comprehensive study provided evidence that state death sentences are haphazardly meted out, with virtually no connection to the heinousness of the crime." The Times also cited racial bias, inadequate representation, and wrongful convictions as problems inherent to the death penalty, saying that "the system cannot be fixed. It is practically impossible to rid the legal process of biases driven by race, class and politics." Ultimately, the paper concluded, it would be better to abolish the death penalty entirely. Read the full editorial below.
Following the recent handing down of a death sentence in Philadelphia, the Executive Director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation blamed the outcome on an inadequate indigent-defense system. Marc Bookman (pictured), writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, reviewed the case and found, "There isn't a single motion filed by the attorneys in defense of their client. Nor is there a request for a jury questionnaire, which is standard in most jurisdictions that regularly handle capital cases, or for a mitigation specialist to prepare a case against the death penalty. Indeed, the only motion in the record was handwritten by the defendant. Prison logs indicate that his lawyers visited him a total of three times." Bookman said that such ineffective representation is the norm in Philadelphia capital cases because of "grossly inadequate" pay for court-appointed lawyers. "In other words," he wrote, "if we're asking attorneys to work for next to nothing, we are likely to get next to nothing from them." Read the full op-ed below.