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Entries tagged with “Miscellaneous”

Facts & Research

New Voices

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Feb 23, 2007

BOOKS: ​“Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist”

In his new auto­bi­og­ra­phy, ​“Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist,” Mike Farrell pro­vides inti­mate accounts of his life as a tele­vi­sion sit­com star and as a human rights activist. Farrell explains how his work on the tele­vi­sion pro­gram M*A*S*H inspired him to become more involved in pol­i­tics and human rights issues. Over the years, he has been con­sid­ered one of Hollywood’s most promi­nent activists, espe­cial­ly on issues relat­ed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Farrell’s work on the death penal­ty took him all over the coun­try. He describes his…

Policy Issues

Innocence

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New Voices

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Sep 26, 2016

Death Row Exonerees Speak Out on State Death Penalty Ballot Questions

As vot­ers get set to cast bal­lots on death penal­ty ques­tions in California, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, U.S. death row exonerees from across the coun­try have been scour­ing those states in an effort to inform the pub­lic of the risks of wrong­ful exe­cu­tions. On September 19, 17 of the nation’s 156 death-row exonerees appeared at a California press con­fer­ence advo­cat­ing approval of Proposition 62, which would replace the death penal­ty with life with­out parole plus resti­tu­tion, and defeat of Proposition 66, which seeks to place lim­its on the cap­i­tal appeals process.…

Facts & Research

New Voices

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Jul 03, 2018

Death-Penalty Juror Describes ​“Anguish” of Imposing a Death Sentence

Lindy Isonhood (click to enlarge pic­ture) served on the Mississippi jury that sen­tenced Bobby Wilcher to death in 1994. In a com­men­tary pub­lished on Medium, she writes that the deci­sion to con­demn Wilcher ​“continue[s] to haunt me today.” Isonhood — whose expe­ri­ence as a death-penal­ty juror is the sub­ject of a new doc­u­men­tary film, Lindy Lou, Juror Number 2—explains how lit­tle she and her fel­low jurors knew about the death-penal­ty sys­tem when they were tasked with deter­min­ing Wilcher’s fate. They were unaware of the rar­i­ty of death sen­tences, the lack of adequate…

Facts & Research

Clemency

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New Voices

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Lethal Injection

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Oct 09, 2018

Governor Rejects Jurors’ Plea for Clemency for Edmund Zagorski as Tennessee Court Allows Lethal Injections to Proceed

Ignoring dec­la­ra­tions by six jurors in Edmund Zagorski​’s 1984 tri­al that they would have spared Zagorski (pic­tured) if they could have sen­tenced him to life with­out parole, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam reject­ed Zagorski’s peti­tion for clemen­cy on October 5, 2018. In con­junc­tion with the Tennessee Supreme Court’s October 8 rul­ing uphold­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col, Haslam’s deci­sion moved the state clos­er to exe­cut­ing Zagorski on October 11. At the time of Zagorski’s tri­al, Tennessee law required jurors in death-penal­ty cas­es to choose between sen­tenc­ing a defen­dant to…

Facts & Research

New Voices

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Lethal Injection

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May 07, 2019

John Oliver’s ​“Last Week Tonight” Takes a Satirical Look at Lethal Injection

Sometimes you need a joke about a cute but very angry desert rain frog to pre­pare an unsus­pect­ing audi­ence for a seri­ous dis­cus­sion of lethal-injec­tion exe­cu­tions in the United States. That was the approach under­tak­en by Last Week Tonight, the satir­i­cal week­ly HBO com­e­dy-news show host­ed by John Oliver, as Oliver addressed the dead­ly seri­ous issue of lethal injec­tion in the show’s May 5, 2019 episode. Oliver called the death penal­ty ​“a wrong, bad thing the gov­ern­ment should not be able to do,” but said that whether you are against…

Policy Issues

Innocence

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Race

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New Voices

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Aug 17, 2017

Merck CEO Ken Frazier: Application of Death Penalty Not ​“Fair and Consistent”

Merck Chief Executive Officer Kenneth C. Frazier (pic­tured) resigned from the president’s American Manufacturing Council on August 14, say­ing “[a]s CEO of Merck and as a mat­ter of per­son­al con­science, I feel a respon­si­bil­i­ty to take a stand against intol­er­ance and extrem­ism.” In a state­ment post­ed on Merck’s Twitter account, Frazier said: ​“Our coun­try’s strength stems from its diver­si­ty and the con­tri­bu­tions made by men and women of dif­fer­ent faiths, races, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tions and polit­i­cal beliefs. America’s lead­ers must hon­or our fun­da­men­tal val­ues by clear­ly reject­ing expres­sions of hatred, bigotry…

Facts & Research

Recent Legislative Activity

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Sentencing Data

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New Voices

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Executions Overview

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Jan 27, 2016

Missouri Likely to See Change After Historic High in Executions

A decline in exe­cu­tions is like­ly in Missouri after two years of unusu­al­ly high num­bers. In 2014, Missouri tied with Texas for the most exe­cu­tions in the U.S., and it was sec­ond to Texas in 2015. However, chang­ing atti­tudes about the death penal­ty – sim­i­lar to nation­al shifts – are evi­dent in Missouri’s sen­tenc­ing trends: no one was sen­tenced to death in Missouri in 2014 or 2015, and less than one per­son per year has been sen­tenced to death in the past sev­en years. Moreover, a bill with bi-par­ti­san sup­port has been intro­duced to…

Facts & Research

New Voices

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Feb 03, 2006

NEW RESOURCES: Constitution Project Releases Updated Death Penalty Reform Recommendations

The Constitution Project​’s blue-rib­bon Death Penalty Initiative released a new report, ​“Mandatory Justice: The Death Penalty Revisited,” an updat­ed set of guid­ing prin­ci­ples for reform of death penal­ty sys­tems. The group is com­prised of cur­rent and for­mer FBI offi­cials, state attor­neys gen­er­al, reli­gious lead­ers, vic­tims of crime, aca­d­e­mics, legal experts, and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers. They iden­ti­fied spe­cif­ic improve­ments to address prob­lems such as arbi­trari­ness, race, inef­fec­tive­ness of coun­sel, wrong­ful con­vic­tions, and crime lab mis­takes. ​“We all have dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on the death penal­ty and the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, but Mandatory Justice…

Policy Issues

Mental Illness

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New Voices

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Jun 15, 2017

NEW VOICES: A Psychologist — a War Veteran with Schizophrenia — Urges Adoption of a Death Penalty Exemption for Severe Mental Illness

In a recent com­men­tary arti­cle in Medium, psy­chol­o­gist Dr. Frederick J. Frese, III (pic­tured) — a Marine Corps vet­er­an who has him­self been diag­nosed with para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia — argues that Congress and state leg­is­la­tures should pass laws exempt­ing peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness from the death penal­ty. ​“Supporters and oppo­nents of the death penal­ty agree that it should only be reserved for the most cul­pa­ble and delib­er­ate of crim­i­nals who com­mit heinous crimes,” Frese writes. He says that “[m]y expe­ri­ence as a prac­ti­tion­er who has him­self expe­ri­enced psy­chosis or a flight from real­i­ty has…

Policy Issues

Sentencing Alternatives

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New Voices

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Jun 16, 2008

NEW VOICES: Another Texas Death Penalty Official Has Second Thoughts

Larry Fitzgerald served as the offi­cial spokesman for Texas exe­cu­tions for eight years. He rep­re­sent­ed the state through 219 lethal injec­tions. Retired in August 2003, Fitzgerald left with what he refers to as a, ​“PhD in prison life.” Due to his exper­tise with the Texas prison sys­tem, defense attor­neys have been uti­liz­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny in death penal­ty cas­es to describe to the jury why the prison sys­tem offers a suit­able alter­na­tive to a death sen­tence. He tes­ti­fies about inmate life, edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties in prison, and most of all, about…

Policy Issues

Victims' Families

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New Voices

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Jan 30, 2019

NEW VOICES: Basketball Star Stephen Curry — ​“I Don’t Believe in the Death Penalty”

Stephen Curry (pic­tured, right, dur­ing a 2015 vis­it to the White House), star of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors and exec­u­tive pro­duc­er of the upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary Emanuel, has pub­licly voiced his oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty. Emanuel tells the sto­ry of the mur­der of nine Black mem­bers of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina by white suprema­cist Dylann Roof. It is the first film pro­duced by Curry’s pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, Unanimous Media, and was co-pro­duced by Viola Davis’s com­pa­ny JuVee Productions. After a January 23, 2019 advance…

Oct 21, 2004

NEW VOICES: California Bar Association Urges Death Penalty Moratorium

A group of 450 attor­neys par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Conference of Delegates of the California Bar Association has urged a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty in California until the state reviews whether cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment laws are enforced fair­ly and uni­form­ly. ​“If you make a mis­take, it’s not like you can go back and cor­rect a mis­take because the per­son is dead,” said Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Danette Meyers, sup­port­er of the mea­sure and a mem­ber of the Bar Association that rep­re­sents pros­e­cu­tors, crim­i­nal defend­ers and civ­il attor­neys from dozens…

Feb 09, 2004

NEW VOICES: Charlize Theron Criticizes Death Penalty After Her Movie Role

Charlize Theron, who recent­ly won a Golden Globe Award for her por­tray­al of exe­cut­ed Florida death row inmate Aileen Wuornos in the movie ​“Monster,” has stat­ed that mak­ing the movie made her more aware of how ​“inef­fec­tive” cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is. Theron, who is opposed to the death penal­ty, was only 15 when her own moth­er shot and killed her drunk­en father after he threat­ened to kill his wife and daugh­ter. ​“I don’t think con­demn­ing peo­ple who mur­der and then killing them nec­es­sar­i­ly sends out the right mes­sage. And I have…

Facts & Research

New Voices

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May 18, 2017

NEW VOICES: Cosmetics Company Launches Death Penalty Documentary, Abolition Campaign

Lush Cosmetics announced on May 15 it has launched a com­mer­cial effort to raise aware­ness about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and sup­port the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty. The com­pa­ny’s ​“Death ≠ Justice” cam­paign includes the release of a short doc­u­men­tary, ​“Exonerated,” which tells the sto­ry of Ohio death-row exoneree Kwame Ajamu. Ajamu (then 17 years old), his broth­er Ronnie Bridgman, and Ricky Jackson were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1975. They were exon­er­at­ed 39 years lat­er in 2014, after the sin­gle eye­wit­ness in the case — a 13-year-old boy…

Facts & Research

New Voices

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Jun 06, 2007

NEW VOICES: Florida League of Women Voters Calls for Halt to Executions

The League of Women Voters of Florida is urg­ing Governor Charlie Crist to con­tin­ue the mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions and to con­sid­er alter­na­tive sen­tences. In a let­ter from Florida League President Dianne Wheatley-Giliotti to Governor Crist, the orga­ni­za­tion not­ed that con­cerns about fair­ness, inno­cence, costs, and pub­lic safe­ty have led them to ques­tion the val­ue of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In their call for a mora­to­ri­um, the League stated:

Policy Issues

Innocence

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New Voices

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May 14, 2007

NEW VOICES: John Grisham on Capital Punishment

Acclaimed author John Grisham recent­ly told The Kansas City Star that the death penal­ty should be ​“abol­ished for­ev­er” in the United States. ​“I think the sys­tem is so bad­ly flawed that all exe­cu­tions should be stopped.… Let’s start with the basic con­cept of a fair tri­al. We are so far away from that in every state in this coun­try,” said Grisham, an attor­ney whose views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment start­ed to shift when he wrote ​“The Chamber,” a nov­el that deals with an exe­cu­tion. Grisham’s most recent best-selling…

Policy Issues

Race

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New Voices

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Dec 15, 2016

NEW VOICES: Latinos Increasingly Vocal in Opposition to Death Penalty

Juan Cartagena (pic­tured), President and General Counsel of LatinoJustice PRLDEF (for­mer­ly the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund), says there is ​“a grow­ing under­stand­ing” among Latinos in Florida and across the coun­try ​“that the death penal­ty is bro­ken and it can’t be fixed.” In an op-ed for the Orlando Sentinel, Cartagena explains the rea­sons for Latino oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty, espe­cial­ly in Florida, which has a large Latino pop­u­la­tion and is home to Miami-Dade, Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Duval coun­ties. Those four coun­ties are among the 16 coun­ties that have imposed…

Facts & Research

New Voices

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Jun 20, 2006

New Voices: League of Women Voters Supports Abolition of the Death Penalty

The League of Women Voters of the United States has adopt­ed an offi­cial nation­al pol­i­cy call­ing for abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty. During the orga­ni­za­tion’s 47th bien­ni­al nation­al con­ven­tion in Minneapolis, del­e­gates adopt­ed pol­i­cy lan­guage stat­ing, ​“The League of Women Voters of the United States sup­ports the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty.” The League of Women Voters has more than 130,000 mem­bers and sup­port­ers. It is a non-par­ti­san polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion that encour­ages the informed and active par­tic­i­pat­ing of cit­i­zens in gov­ern­ment, works to increase under­stand­ing of major pub­lic pol­i­cy issues,…

Policy Issues

Race

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New Voices

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Jan 16, 2006

NEW VOICES: NAACP President Signals Greater Organizational Involvement in the Death Penalty

In a recent inter­view with The Washington Post, NAACP pres­i­dent Bruce C. Gordon (pic­tured) spoke about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and called for a halt to exe­cu­tions in every state until ques­tions of accu­ra­cy and fair­ness can be addressed. Gordon, who chal­lenged California Governor Arnold Schwarzennegger for refus­ing to com­mute the death sen­tence of Stanley Tookie Williams, not­ed that the death penal­ty will be a key issue for the NAACP: African Americans rep­re­sent 10 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion and 42 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion on death row. That to me illus­trates the…

Apr 12, 2004

NEW VOICES: Rosalynn Carter Calls for End to Juvenile Death Penalty

In a recent opin­ion piece pub­lished in The Miami Herald, for­mer First Lady Rosalynn Carter called on Florida and oth­er states that con­tin­ue to sen­tence juve­nile offend­ers to death to aban­don the prac­tice, not­ing that it ​“vio­lates cur­rent prin­ci­ples of American jus­tice.” Carter stat­ed that America could soon be the last nation on Earth to exe­cute juve­nile offend­ers, and that the U.S. is one of only two nations that have not rat­i­fied the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Carter wrote: ​“Our coun­try has sought to protect…

Policy Issues

Intellectual Disability

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United States Supreme Court

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New Voices

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Nov 23, 2016

NEW VOICES: Special Olympics Chair Urges Supreme Court to Strike Down Texas’ ​‘Horrific’ Criteria for Determining Intellectual Disability

Timothy Shriver (pic­tured), the Chairman of the Special Olympics, has called on the U.S. Supreme Court to end Texas’ ​“use of stig­ma­tiz­ing stereo­types” in deter­min­ing whether a defen­dant has Intellectual Disability and is there­fore inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion. On November 29, the Court will hear argu­ment in Moore v. Texas, a case chal­leng­ing Texas’ use of the ​“Briseño fac­tors” — a set of unsci­en­tif­ic cri­te­ria based in part on the fic­tion­al char­ac­ter of Lennie Smalls from the nov­el ​“Of Mice and Men” — to deter­mine whether cap­i­tal­ly charged pris­on­ers have sig­nif­i­cant impair­ments in adap­tive functioning…

Facts & Research

New Voices

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Federal Death Penalty

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Mar 10, 2008

New Yorkers Showing Resistance to Federal Death Penalty

Since the fed­er­al death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1988, the state of New York has been more reluc­tant to impose death sen­tences than oth­er states, accord­ing to the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project. New York fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors have asked juries to impose death sen­tences 19 times, but in only one of those cas­es did they vote for the death penal­ty. Nationally, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors win death penal­ties in about 33% of cas­es. In some cas­es, fed­er­al judges in New York have asked the Justice Department to recon­sid­er its autho­riza­tion of…

Facts & Research

New Voices

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Mar 01, 2017

Ohio Jurors Report Emotional Toll of Serving on Capital Case

The costs of the death penal­ty are more than finan­cial, they are emo­tion­al; and these effects are felt not just by the par­ties to the tri­al and the fam­i­lies of vic­tims and defen­dants, but by the jurors as well. A recent report in the Akron Beacon Journal describes the trau­mat­ic psy­cho­log­i­cal impact serv­ing in the Summit County, Ohio death penal­ty tri­al of Eric Hendon had on the jurors in that case. After a three-month tri­al and cap­i­tal-sen­tenc­ing hear­ing, the jury found Hendon guilty of a 2013 triple mur­der and sentenced…

Policy Issues

Innocence

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New Voices

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Nov 15, 2016

OUTLIER COUNTIES: Alabama’s Leading Death Sentencing County Elects Prosecutors Who Oppose Capital Punishment

Jefferson County, Alabama is among both the 2% of coun­ties that account for more than half of all exe­cu­tions in the U.S. and are respon­si­ble for more than half of all pris­on­ers on death row across the coun­try. It led the state in new death sen­tences from 2010 – 2015, putting more peo­ple on death row than 99.5% of U.S. coun­ties. All five of the defen­dants sen­tenced to death in those cas­es were Black.

Policy Issues

Race

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New Voices

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Dec 02, 2016

OUTLIER COUNTIES: Dallas County, Texas Imposing Fewer Death Sentences After Years of Discrimination

With 55 exe­cu­tions since the 1970s, Dallas County, Texas, ranks sec­ond among all U.S. coun­ties — behind only Harris County (Houston), Texas — in the num­ber of pris­on­ers it has put to death. It is also among the 2% of coun­ties that account for more than half of all pris­on­ers on death row across the coun­try, and pro­duced sev­en new death sen­tences and one resen­tence between 2010 and 2015, more than 99.5% of all U.S. coun­ties dur­ing that period.

Facts & Research

New Voices

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Lethal Injection

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May 16, 2016

Pfizer Announces Restrictions to Keep States From Using Its Medicines in Executions

On May 13, the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny Pfizer announced that it would impose strict dis­tri­b­u­tion con­trols to block states from obtain­ing and using its med­i­cines in exe­cu­tions. In a state­ment, the com­pa­ny said, ​“Pfizer makes its prod­ucts to enhance and save the lives of the patients we serve. Consistent with these val­ues, Pfizer strong­ly objects to the use of its prod­ucts as lethal injec­tions for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” With Pfizer’s announce­ment, every major phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny that pro­duces drugs that have been used in lethal injec­tions has voiced oppo­si­tion to involve­ment in executions.…

Policy Issues

Mental Illness

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Recent Legislative Activity

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New Voices

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Jan 05, 2018

Retired Lt. General: Exclude Mentally Ill Vets from the Death Penalty

Saying that the death penal­ty should ​“be reserved for the ​‘worst of the worst in our soci­ety,’” retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General John Castellaw (pic­tured) has urged the Tennessee state leg­is­la­ture to adopt pend­ing leg­is­la­tion that would bar the death penal­ty for peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness­es. In an op-ed in the Memphis news­pa­per, The Commercial Appeal, General Castellaw writes that the death penal­ty ​“should not be pre­scribed for those with severe men­tal ill­ness­es, includ­ing those peo­ple with ill­ness­es con­nect­ed to their mil­i­tary ser­vice.” A 2015 report by the Death…

Facts & Research

New Voices

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Mar 28, 2016

Texas Capital Juror Regrets Vote to Sentence Defendant to Death

In an inter­view with The Marshall Project, Texas death penal­ty juror Sven Berger says he would not have vot­ed to sen­tence cap­i­tal defen­dant Paul Storey to death in 2008 had he known about Storey’s ​“bor­der­line intel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing,” his­to­ry of depres­sion, and oth­er evi­dence that Storey’s lawyer failed to present at tri­al. Berger and 11 oth­er Texas jurors unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to sen­tence Storey to death, but Berger says that at the time of jury delib­er­a­tions he did not believe Storey would pose a con­tin­u­ing dan­ger to soci­ety if incar­cer­at­ed — a…

Facts & Research

New Voices

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Feb 07, 2019

THE ARTS: Death-Penalty Film, ​‘Clemency,’ Wins Sundance Festival Best Drama Award

Clemency, a film explor­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal toll of the death penal­ty, has been award­ed the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for Drama at the pres­ti­gious Sundance Film Festival on February 2, 2019. The movie, writ­ten and direct­ed by Nigerian-American film­mak­er Chinonye Chukwu, tells the sto­ry of prison war­den Bernadine Williams (por­trayed by Alfre Woodard) as she pre­pares to over­see her 12th exe­cu­tion in the after­math of a botched exe­cu­tion. Chukwu said she was inspired to write the script after the con­tro­ver­sial exe­cu­tion of Troy Davis, a Georgia pris­on­er with seri­ous claims…

Facts & Research

New Voices

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Mar 30, 2006

The Impact of the Death Penalty on Jurors

During a recent pre­sen­ta­tion at Valparaiso University, Sister Helen Prejean (pic­tured) engaged in a dis­cus­sion with the school’s pas­tor, Rev. Joseph Cunningham. Responding to a remark that Prejean had made about defense attor­neys only need­ing to con­vince one juror to vote against the death penal­ty, Cunningham told Prejean that he had been fore­man of a jury that sen­tenced a man to death in 1995. He remarked that he is still deal­ing with the emo­tion­al toll of that expe­ri­ence, stat­ing, ​“I ache every day. That is why I want­ed to meet…