Publications & Testimony

Items: 5041 — 5050


Oct 05, 2006

Mississippi Death Row Inmate Argues Killing Was In Self-Defense

Corey Maye was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of a police offi­cer in Prentiss, Mississippi, on the day after Christmas in 2001. The police offi­cer was part of a drug raid on a neigh­bor’s apart­ment. Maye claims that the police broke into his duplex unan­nounced and that he fired his gun in defense of him­self and his 18-month-old daugh­ter. Mississippi Circuit Court Judge Michael Eubanks recent­ly ruled that Maye was enti­tled to a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing because his…

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Oct 04, 2006

NEW BOOK: The Innocent Man” by John Grisham

On October 10th, 2006, John Grisham​’s first non-fic­­tion book, The Innocent Man, will be released. The book is the com­pelling true sto­ry of Ron Williamson, a for­mer home­town base­ball hero of Ada, Oklahoma, who was con­vict­ed in 1988 of rap­ing and mur­der­ing Debbie Carter. In 1999, Williamson was exon­er­at­ed of the crime after serv­ing eleven years on death row. In the con­text of this case, Grisham address­es many of the fun­da­men­tal issues that sur­round the death…

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Oct 02, 2006

BOOKS: Minding Justice: Laws that Deprive People with Mental Disability of Life and Liberty”

Christopher Slobogin of the University of Florida’s Law School has writ­ten a new book about the state’s legal author­i­ty to deprive peo­ple with men­tal dis­abil­i­ties of life or lib­er­ty. The book dis­cuss­es a num­ber of well known cas­es such as that of John Hinckley and Andrea Yates. It also includes dis­cus­sion of laws deal­ing with the insan­i­ty defense, the death penal­ty, com­mit­ment of sex­u­al preda­tors, and hos­pi­tal­iza­tion of peo­ple con­sid­ered unable to make…

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Oct 02, 2006

The Chaos Behind California Executions

Monday, October 2, 2006The Chaos Behind California ExecutionsTrial tes­ti­mo­ny paints lethal injec­tion meth­ods as hap­haz­ard, with lit­tle med­ical over­sight.By Maura Dolan and Henry WeinsteinLos Angeles Times Staff WritersSAN JOSE — Operational Procedure No. 770,” the state’s name for exe­cu­tion by lethal injec­tion, is per­formed in a dark, cramped room by men and women who know lit­tle, if any­thing, about the dead­ly drugs they inject under extreme…

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Sep 28, 2006

REPRESENTATION: Judges Criticize Incompetent Representation in Texas

One attor­ney’s appeal brief on behalf of a Texas death row inmate was so poor­ly writ­ten that State District Judge Noe Gonzalez of Edinburg wrote that​“Applicant total­ly mis­in­ter­prets what actu­al­ly occurred in this case.” A com­mit­tee of cit­i­zens and attor­neys filed a com­plaint about the appel­late lawyer with the State Bar of Texas, but noth­ing was done: the lawyer remains on the state’s list of approved death penal­ty attor­neys, and the client remains on death row. The…

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Sep 27, 2006

Conference to Address Mental Illness and the Death Penalty

The Charlotte School of Law is spon­sor­ing a symposium on ​“Mental Illness and the Death Penalty: Seeking a​‘Reasoned Moral Response’ to an Unavoidable Condition” on October 20, 2006 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The con­fer­ence will bring togeth­er med­ical experts, judges, defense attor­neys, pros­e­cu­tors, and oth­er experts to dis­cuss whether cur­rent law ade­quate­ly accounts for the role of men­tal ill­ness in cap­i­tal cas­es. Among those sched­uled to speak are…

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Sep 27, 2006

NEW VOICES: Former FBI Director Warns Against Stripping Death Penalty Appeals

The for­mer Director of the FBI, William Sessions (pic­tured), along with Timothy Lewis, a for­mer judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals, called on mem­bers of Congress to refrain from bar­ring death row inmates and oth­er defen­dants from the full access to the fed­er­al courts in their appeals. Some leg­is­la­tors have pro­posed elim­i­nat­ing fed­er­al habeas cor­pus review in many cas­es, and bar­ring access to the fed­er­al courts to many of those raising…

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Sep 26, 2006

RESOURCES: DEATH ROW USA Summer 2006 Now Available

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s​“Death Row USA” shows that the num­ber of peo­ple on the death row in the United States is con­tin­u­ing to decline, falling to 3,366 as of July 1, 2006. The size of death row increased every year between 1976 and 2000, but since then it has been in…

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Sep 26, 2006

RESOURCES: New FBI Report Shows U.S. Murder Rate Unchanged Over 5 Years

The FBI recent­ly released the lat­est ver­sion of its Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the United States 2005. The report showed that the mur­der rate in 2005 (5.6 mur­ders per 100,000 peo­ple) was the same as in 2001, with lit­tle change in the inter­ven­ing years. Death sen­tences, exe­cu­tions and the size of death row all declined dur­ing this peri­od. As in pre­vi­ous years, the South had the high­erst mur­der rate, 6.6, among the 4 geo­graph­i­cal regions. Over 80% of the…

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