Articles

An edi­to­r­i­al in the Austin-American Statesman praised the rec­om­men­da­tions of the gov­er­nor’s advi­so­ry coun­cil on crim­i­nal jus­tice, espe­cial­ly in regard to changes need­ed in the death penal­ty sys­tem. Excerpts from the edi­to­r­i­al appear below:

The most recent edi­tion of the Amicus Journal, a London pub­li­ca­tion that pro­vides a forum for dia­logue on issues con­cern­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment around the world, con­tains arti­cles address­ing U.S. death penal­ty con­cerns. Among the top­ics cov­ered are clemen­cy, men­tal retar­da­tion, con­di­tions on death row, inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel, and lethal injec­tion. The mag­a­zine fea­tures pieces by a num­ber of U.S. death penal­ty experts, includ­ing an essay on clemen­cy by Austin Sarat and a reprint of a speech by Stephen Bright. The mag­a­zine also con­tains arti­cles about inter­na­tion­al death penal­ty developments,…

The San Antonio Express-News, which sup­ports the death penal­ty, recent­ly called for a halt to exe­cu­tions in Texas because of con­cerns about the ongo­ing prob­lems at the Houston Crime Lab. The Express-News stated:This month, New Jersey law­mak­ers vot­ed to halt exe­cu­tions while a task force reviews the fair­ness and costs of impos­ing the death penalty.Texas should con­sid­er doing the same but for slight­ly dif­fer­ent reasons.The dis­turb­ing facts com­ing out of an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into cas­es han­dled by the Houston Police Department lab beg for a tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of exe­cu­tions, at…

The Washington Post edi­to­ri­al­ized about the death penal­ty in 2005, com­ment­ing on many of the points made in DPIC’s Year End Report:[T]he over­all ten­den­cy is unmis­tak­able: At least for now, with crime and mur­der rates low and the threat of wrong­ful con­vic­tions on peo­ple’s minds, the death penal­ty does not have the same attrac­tion that it once had.

2005

As evi­dence sur­faces that Texas may have killed an inno­cent man when it exe­cut­ed Ruben Cantu in 1993, recent edi­to­ri­als by the Austin American-Statesman and the Dallas Morning News have crit­i­cized Texas’ death penal­ty and called on the state to take a clos­er look at its ​“flawed” cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. The Austin American-Stateman wrote: We all should remem­ber (Ruben) Cantu’s case and the lessons it offers as the coun­try car­ries out its 1000^th exe­cu­tion since 1976 sched­uled for today in North Carolina. It now appears that Cantu was right. That…

Washington Post, Nov. 14, 2005, by Jerry MarkonAs prepa­ra­tions inten­si­fy for the upcom­ing death penal­ty tri­al of Zacarias Moussaoui, new­ly unsealed court doc­u­ments are lay­ing out the argu­ments pros­e­cu­tors and defense attor­neys plan to make in what is like­ly to be the only judi­cial reck­on­ing for the Sept. 11, 2001, ter­ror­ist attacks.Prosecutors will tell an Alexandria fed­er­al court jury that Moussaouideserves to die because he lied to the FBI when he was arrest­ed a mon­th­be­fore the ter­ror­ist assaults that killed near­ly 3,000 peo­ple, the papersindi­cate. If the French cit­i­zen had…

According to the North Carolina News & Record, death sen­tences in the state have sig­nif­i­cant­ly declined since the 2001 enact­ment of leg­is­la­tion that allows defen­dants to plead guilty to first-degree mur­der and receive a sen­tence of life with­out parole rather than go to tri­al and risk the death penal­ty. Juries are also return­ing few­er death sen­tences. The paper argues that the emer­gence of the life-with­out-parole alter­na­tive should result in a recon­sid­er­a­tion of the sen­tences of those already on death row:

In an edi­to­r­i­al in its Sunday, November 6 edi­tion, the Birminham News announced that ​“After decades of sup­port­ing the death penal­ty, the edi­to­r­i­al board no longer can do so.” The paper cit­ed both prac­ti­cal and eth­i­cal rea­sons for the change in its stance: “[W]e have come to believe Alabama’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem is bro­ken. And because, first and fore­most, this news­pa­per’s edi­to­r­i­al board is com­mit­ted to a cul­ture of life.… We believe all life is sacred. And in embrac­ing a cul­ture of life, we can­not make distinctions…

In an edi­to­r­i­al on October 27, the Los Angeles Times called for an end to the death penal­ty in California. The Times stat­ed that the pun­ish­ment should end not because of the mer­its of indi­vid­ual death row inmates, such as Stanley Williams, sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on December 13, but because of ​“who we are” as a civ­i­lized society:EDITORIAL Shut down death rowOctober 27, 2005STANLEY ​“TOOKIE” WILLIAMS is a charis­mat­ic sym­bol of what’s wrong with the death penal­ty — and of what’s wrong with the debate about the death penal­ty. His…