Articles

Jeffrey Toobin, writ­ing in The New Yorker, used the cur­rent scram­ble among states to pro­cure the drugs for lethal injec­tions as a par­a­digm of the much longer effort to make the death penal­ty palat­able to the American pub­lic.​“The sto­ry of the death penal­ty in this coun­try,” he wrote,​“illus­trates a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly American faith in a tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion to any prob­lem.” However, Toobin con­clud­ed, tech­nol­o­gy can not cov­er up the…

In an op-ed in the Knoxville News-Sentinel, Tennessean Drew Johnson evoked con­ser­v­a­tives’ inten­tions to​“pro­tect inno­cent life, pro­mote finan­cial respon­si­bil­i­ty and sup­port gov­ern­ment pro­grams that real­ly work” in crit­i­ciz­ing the death penal­ty. Johnson, a Senior Fellow at Taxpayers Protection Alliance and founder of the Beacon Center of Tennessee, cit­ed the many exon­er­a­tions from death row as anoth­er rea­son to challenge capital…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Dallas Morning News high­light­ed the voic­es of promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tives who now oppose cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, includ­ing for­mer Texas Congressman Ron Paul and con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal leader Richard Viguerie. The paper not­ed the new part­ner­ship between the stu­­dent-cen­tered orga­ni­za­tion Young Americans for Liberty and Conservatives Concerned About the Death…

Jeff Gerritt is the Deputy Editor of the Toledo Blade, a paper which has sup­port­ed Ohio​’s death penal­ty for years. Disagreeing with the paper’s Editor, Gerritt called for repeal of the death penal­ty in the state, not­ing the risk of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent,​“Wrongly con­vict­ing any­one con­sti­tutes a hor­ri­ble injus­tice, but exe­cut­ing the wrong per­son elim­i­nates any chance of revers­ing the error. Nationwide, more than 140 people awaiting…

The Concord Monitor of New Hampshire called for repeal of the state’s death penal­ty in a recent edi­to­r­i­al. The paper con­trast­ed the case of Michael Addison, the state’s only death row inmate, to that of John Brooks, who was con­vict­ed of hir­ing three hit­men to kill a handy­man, whom Brooks believed had stolen from him. Brooks received a sen­tence of life with­out parole. The Monitor not­ed,​“Brooks was rich and white; Addison was poor and black.……

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Akron Beacon Journal (Ohio) called for DNA test­ing in the death penal­ty case of Tyrone Noling. Noling has been on death row for 17 years. His con­vic­tion was based large­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of three friends who have since recant­ed their sto­ries, claim­ing they were coerced by the pros­e­cu­tion. No phys­i­cal evi­dence linked Noling to the crime, and he has passed a poly­graph test. Noling is requesting the…

Michael Morton (pic­tured), who was released after 25 years in prison for a crime he did not com­mit, and Barry Scheck, co-direc­­tor of the Innocence Project, called for reforms in Texas’s clemen­cy process. In a recent op-ed in the Houston Chronicle, Morton and Scheck high­light­ed the case of Cameron Willingham, who was exe­cut­ed in 2004 despite seri­ous doubts about his guilt. According to the authors, it is now under­stood that investigators who…

Wyoming​’s Casper Star-Tribune recent­ly point­ed out why many fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims favor life-with­­out-parole sen­tences over the death penal­ty . “[I]t may be a sur­prise that many fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims pre­fer the life with­out parole sen­tence, sim­ply because it puts the killer away for­ev­er with­out the decades-long court appeals that can accom­pa­ny a death sen­tence,” the paper wrote. The edi­to­r­i­al not­ed that there is only one person…

A recent Boston Globe edi­to­r­i­al called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder not to seek the death penal­ty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man accused of car­ry­ing out the bomb­ing at the Boston Marathon. The edi­tors said the lengthy death-penal­­ty process would put the spot­light on the defen­dant to the detri­ment of the vic­tims:​“Years of pro­ceed­ings, and their poten­tial cul­mi­na­tion in a death sen­tence, would also give Tsarnaev what he and his brother apparently…

The for­tu­itous inves­ti­ga­tion of a case by per­sis­tent jour­nal­ists, rather than the work­ings of the lim­it­ed appel­late process, has led to the exon­er­a­tion of a num­ber of inno­cent indi­vid­u­als. Maurice Possley (l.), a for­mer reporter for the Chicago Tribune, recent­ly wrote how he and fel­low-jour­­nal­ist Steve Mills (r.) helped free Daniel Taylor (c.) in Illinois, where he had spent more than 20 years in prison. In…