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 broader problems of capital punishment: “The oxymoronic quest…

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 punishment: “Life is too precious to rely on mistake-prone…

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 Penalty. The editorial described why one Texas conservative, Pat Monks, a Republican precinct chairman in Harris County…

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 execution have been exonerated. Mistakes are far more likely in…

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…. Addison’s victim had the full force of New Hampshire…

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 testing of additional evidence that could finally prove he was not…

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 believed that Willingham committed arson were…

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 on the state’s death row, and he is there for a crime…

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 sought: publicity and notoriety. Much…

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 2001, the reporters published a story exposing the false and coerced confession that led…