Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Following a manslaugh­ter con­vic­tion for a crime com­mit­ted when he was 19 years old in Louisiana in 1961, Wilbert Rideau, the acclaimed prison jour­nal­ist, was set free by the tri­al judge on Saturday. January 15. His con­vic­tion car­ries a max­i­mum sen­tence of 21 years and Rideau has already served 44 years in prison, pri­mar­i­ly in Angola. Rideau, who is black, was orig­i­nal­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death by an all-white, all-male jury for killing a white woman. His death…

Note: The Court of Appeals denied the chal­lenge to California’s lethal injec­tion process. Just one week before the sched­uled exe­cu­tion of California death row inmate Donald Beardslee, judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit are con­sid­er­ing a suit filed by the ACLU of California, Death Penalty Focus, and Beardslee’s defense attor­neys con­cern­ing the state’s use of a par­a­lyz­ing chem­i­cal called Pavulon in lethal injec­tions. Beardslee’s attorneys said…

Among the new resources avail­able on DPIC​’s Web site are sum­maries of death penal­ty cas­es the U.S. Supreme Court has recent­ly agreed to hear, includ­ing the case involv­ing Mexican cit­i­zens on U.S. death rows. The upcom­ing cas­es sum­ma­rized include Medellin v. Dretke, Bell v. Thompson, and Mitchell v. Stumpf. In addi­tion to these sum­maries, DPIC has post­ed an overview of the new Innocence Protection Act, as well as an updat­ed ver­sion of it’s 4‑page Death Penalty Fact…

Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America’s Death Row, by Professor David Dow, to be released in April 2005, is a behind-the-scenes look at the death penal­ty through the lens of an attor­ney who for­mer­ly sup­port­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Dow, who teach­es at the University of Houston Law Center and found­ed the Texas Innocence Network, pro­vides case his­to­ries illus­trat­ing seri­ous flaws in the death penal­ty sys­tem. He uses these cas­es to guide readers…

In an exam­i­na­tion of the case against three men sen­tenced to death for a triple mur­der that occurred in Tucson’s El Grande Market, reporter Jeffrey Toobin in the New Yorker describes the inci­dents that led to the fall of the lead pros­e­cu­tor, Kenneth Peasley, for pre­sent­ing false evi­dence in the case. Only one of the co-defen­­­dants, Martin Soto-Fong, remains on Arizona’s death row. Of the oth­er two defen­dants, Christopher McCrimmon was acquit­ted at a re-tri­al in 1997, and Andre…

With just days remain­ing in his term, Indiana Governor Joe Kernan (pic­tured) has grant­ed clemen­cy to Michael Daniels, whose case under­scored the Governor’s con­cerns about the death penalty. ​“I have now encoun­tered two cas­es where doubt about an offend­er’s per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty and the qual­i­ty of the legal process lead­ing to the cap­i­tal sen­tence has led me to grant clemen­cy. These instances should cause us to take a hard look at how Indiana administers and…

As Connecticut pre­pares to car­ry out its first exe­cu­tion in over 40 years, Catholic Archbishop Henry J. Mansell of Hartford called on local parish­es to sign a Church peti­tion that calls for an end to capital punishment. ​“The death penal­ty offers the trag­ic illu­sion that we can defend life only by tak­ing life,” Mansell wrote in a let­ter that will be read dur­ing Masses on January 8 and 9. Other bish­ops in Connecticut are tak­ing sim­i­lar actions pri­or to the…

The Washington Post has con­duct­ed fur­ther research into the clemen­cy mem­os pre­pared by U.S. Attorney General nom­i­nee Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as lead coun­sel to then-Governor George W. Bush in Texas. Gonzales craft­ed 62 mem­os regard­ing clemen­cy requests from Texas death row inmates, and sev­er­al Texas attor­neys have voiced their crit­i­cisms that the clemen­cy mem­os con­tained incom­plete and unfair sum­maries of evi­dence and mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances. The memos,…

The book In Sweet Company: Conversations With Extraordinary Women About Living a Spiritual Life by Margaret Wolff fea­tures Sister Helen Prejean as one of 14 women whose spir­i­tu­al beliefs have served as the com­pass for their deci­­­sion-mak­ing and life’s work. Prejean, author of the Pulitzer Prize-nom­i­­­nat­ed book​“Dead Man Walking” and the new­ly released​“The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions,” has been an advi­sor to those on death row and an…

In her new book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, Sister Helen Prejean uses her per­son­al expe­ri­ences as a coun­selor to those on death row to explore the issue of inno­cence and the like­li­hood of exe­cut­ing a wrong­ly con­vict­ed per­son. The book also traces the his­tor­i­cal and legal under­pin­nings of the death penal­ty in the U.S. Prejean, who authored the #1 New York Times best­seller​“Dead Man Walking,” begins her new book…