Publications & Testimony

Items: 6161 — 6170


Jul 21, 2003

Two Former Death Row Inmates Exonerated and Freed in Ohio

After spend­ing a quar­ter cen­tu­ry in prison, includ­ing time on Ohio’s death row, Timothy Howard and Gary Lemar James have been freed from prison and all charges against the men will be dropped. The men, who have main­tained their inno­cence since their arrest in 1976, were freed, accord­ing to Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien, in the inter­est of jus­tice.” O’Brien stat­ed, The les­son to be learned is what I said in the let­ter I sent a year and a half ago. We don’t want any­body in prison…

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Jul 18, 2003

North Carolina Supreme Court Upholds Controversial Death Penalty Practice

In a rul­ing that could affect near­ly every death row inmate in the state, the North Carolina Supreme Court has upheld the prac­tice of using indict­ments with­out aggra­vat­ing fac­tors in mur­der cas­es. The rul­ing came in the case of death row inmate Henry Lee Hunt. Hunt’s attor­neys had argued that, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s rul­ing in Ring v. Arizona, fail­ure to include aggra­vat­ing fac­tors in first-degree mur­der indict­ments is a vio­la­tion of the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.

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Jul 18, 2003

DEATH PENALTY INFORMATION CENTER ANNOUNCES THE WINNERS OF ITS SEVENTH ANNUAL THURGOOD MARSHALL JOURNALISM AWARDS

The Execution of Wanda Jean,” an HBO doc­u­men­tary direct­ed by Liz Garbus of Moxie Firecracker Films, and a series of news arti­cles by the staff of the York Daily Record, includ­ing exten­sive cov­er­age of the release of Pennsylvania native Ray Krone from Arizona’s death row, will receive hon­ors dur­ing the Death Penalty Information Center’s (DPIC) Seventh Annual Thurgood Marshall Journalism Awards at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The pro­gram will also fea­ture keynote remarks from…

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Jul 18, 2003

NEW VOICES: Australian Judge and Parent of Bombing Victim Rejects Death Penalty

Brian Deegan, a mag­is­trate in South Australia who lost his son in the October 2002 Sari night­club bomb­ing in Bali, recent­ly stat­ed that he believes the ter­ror­ists who com­mit­ed that crime should not receive the death penal­ty, but should be sen­tenced to a term of life in prison with­out parole. In an opin­ion piece in The Australian, Deegan…

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Jul 18, 2003

Texas Lawmakers Receive Failing Grade from Criminal Justice Reform Leaders

As the Texas leg­isla­tive ses­sion came to a close, crim­i­nal jus­tice reform advo­cates gave law­mak­ers a fail­ing grade for their work in address­ing prob­lems in the state’s legal sys­tem. Senator Rodney Ellis of Houston joined an array of legal experts to crit­i­cize the state leg­is­la­tors’ inabil­i­ty to pass mea­sures to end the exe­cu­tion of juve­nile offend­ers, to strength­en the con­sular noti­fi­ca­tion process for for­eign nation­als, and to require the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to hold a hearing…

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Jul 18, 2003

Kansas Lawmakers to Study Death Penalty Costs

The Legislative Coordinating Council of Kansas, a group of leg­isla­tive lead­ers who rep­re­sent the Kansas leg­is­la­ture when it’s not in ses­sion, recent­ly autho­rized com­mit­tees to study three aspects of the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment law this sum­mer. Among the top­ics under review are the cost of impos­ing the death penal­ty, the state’s fund­ing of the Board of Indigents’ Defense Services and its Death Penalty Unit, and the effec­tive­ness of laws to ensure that men­tal­ly ill defen­dants are not…

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Jul 18, 2003

ACLU Report Calls for Halt to Executions

The ACLU Capital Punishment Project recent­ly released Three Decades Later: Why We Need A Temporary Halt on Executions,” a report that comes just over 30 years after the Supreme Court’s Furman v. Georgia deci­sion that placed a tem­po­rary halt on exe­cu­tions because the death penal­ty was being applied in an arbi­trary, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, and capri­cious man­ner. While the Supreme Court upheld state cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statutes writ­ten after Furman in its 1976 Gregg v. Georgia deci­sion, the report notes…

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