Entries tagged with “Prosecutors”
Issues
Feb 28, 2024
New Report from Texas Defender Service Examines Ongoing Racial Disparities in Harris County Death Penalty Practices and Recommends Reforms
A new report from the Texas Defender Service (TDS) titled “Arbitrary and Capricious: Examining Racial Disparities in Harris County’s Pursuit of Death Sentences” was published on February 22, 2024 and is the latest in series of TDS reports on use of the death penalty in Texas. The report focuses on Harris County’s outlier death penalty practices, both within the state and nationally. While more than half of the 254 counties in Texas have never imposed a death sentence, Harris County is…
Issues
Feb 23, 2024
Black History Month Profile Series: Craig Watkins
This month, DPIC celebrates Black History Month with weekly profiles of notable Black Americans whose work affected the modern death penalty era. The third in this series is former Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, who died on December 12, 2023. Craig Watkins, a former defense attorney, was elected as Texas’ first Black district attorney and was the creator of the nation’s first Conviction Integrity Unit. He served two terms as Dallas County District Attorney, from 2007 – 2015.
Issues
Jan 31, 2024
Examining the Implications of Uncontested Prosecutor Elections in Ohio
In a new article from Bolts, journalist Daniel Nichanian writes about the dearth of candidates in Ohio’s county prosecutor elections. “Of the 27 counties with more than 100,000 residents in Ohio, 70 percent drew just one candidate” to run for election or reelection as county prosecutor. Only 15 of Ohio’s 88 prosecutor elections this year drew multiple candidates by the December deadline, according to Bolts’ research: “This means that the vast majority of the state’s prosecuting attorneys are…
Apr 20, 2022
Texas District Attorney Calls Death Penalty “Unethical,” Tries to Withdraw Execution Notice for John Ramirez
Days after his office asked to set an execution date for Texas death row prisoner John Ramirez, Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzalez (pictured) asked Ramirez’s trial court to withdraw the order. Gonzalez, a former defense attorney who was elected in 2016 on a platform of criminal justice reform, said he has come to view the death penalty as “unethical” and that the request for an execution date was the result of a miscommunication within his office. “The undersigned District Attorney…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Conditions on Death Row
,Mar 02, 2022
Melissa Lucio Files Motions to Vacate Death Warrant, Remove Judge and District Attorney Based on Conflicts of Interest
Lawyers for Texas death-row prisoner Melissa Lucio (pictured) have moved to vacate her April 27, 2022 execution date and remove the judge and district attorney in her case because of conflicts of interest stemming from their employment of key members of Lucio’s original defense team. Lucio’s lead trial counsel, Peter Gilman, is now employed as an assistant district attorney in the Cameron County District Attorney’s office and Irma Gilman, who was counsel’s paralegal at the time of trial, is…
Research
May 19, 2021
Nevada Governor, Senate Leaders Block Death-Penalty Abolition Bill That Passed State Assembly
A bill to abolish Nevada’s death penalty died without a vote in the state senate after Governor Steve Sisolak (pictured) declared on May 13, 2021 that “there is no path forward” to ban the practice. Shortly thereafter, Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, one of two Las Vegas prosecutors to hold leadership positions in the legislature, said that legislators had failed to reach a consensus on possible amendments to the bill, ending efforts to move any reforms forward before the legislative…
Issues
Apr 29, 2021
DPIC’s New Podcast Series, Rethinking Public Safety, Debuts with a Discussion with Former Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro
As a state legislator in 1981, Jim Petro (pictured) supported a bill to reinstate Ohio’s death penalty after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s previous capital punishment statute. Later, as Ohio Attorney General, he supervised 19 executions in the state. Since then, his views have changed and he recently co-authored an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch urging the legislature to repeal the state’s death penalty. In the April 2021 episode of the Death Penalty Information Center podcast…
Issues
Mar 17, 2021
Former Alabama Attorney General, Appeals Court Judges Call for New Trial for Death-Row Prisoner Toforest Johnson
More than a dozen former Alabama prosecutors, judges, and state bar presidents have filed briefs in a Birmingham court calling for a new trial for Alabama death-row prisoner Toforest Johnson (pictured, center, with family members). The extraordinary filings join Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr in supporting efforts by lawyers from the Southern Center for Human Rights, the University of California-Berkeley Law School Death Penalty Clinic, and the Innocence Project to free Johnson…
Executions
Mar 11, 2021
Civil Rights Groups Accuse California District Attorneys of Unlawfully Interfering in Death Penalty Lawsuit
Five civil rights organizations have asked a California appeals court to block the efforts of three county district attorneys to lift stays of execution agreed to by the state as part of a federal-court settlement of death-row prisoners’ challenge to California’s lethal-injection protocol. [UPDATE: On March 9, 2021, the First District Court of Appeals dismissed the groups’ lawsuit.] On March 5, 2021, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, Congregations Organized for…
Issues
Oct 30, 2020
Legal Scholarship: A Proposal for Greater Prosecutorial Accountability
To rein in the social and economic costs caused by the overly aggressive use of the death penalty by prosecutors, a California legal scholar is proposing a plan he believes will reduce miscarriages of justice and increase prosecutorial accountability. In Shrinking the Accountability Deficit in Capital Charging, a new chapter in the 2020 Oxford Handbook of Prosecutors and Prosecution, UCLA law professor Sherod Thaxton (pictured) argues that to temper the unfettered discretion local prosecutors…
Issues
Jul 13, 2020
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of July 6, 2020
NEWS (7/9/20) — Florida: The Florida Supreme Court upheld the conviction and death sentence of Troy Merck, Jr. Merck had argued that his lawyer had unconstitutionally conceded his guilt over Merck’s objection. The court said there was no concession. According to the decision, “Merck argued that his conviction violates the Sixth Amendment pursuant to the United States Supreme Court’s decision in McCoy v. Louisiana … because his appointed trial counsel refused to abide by Merck’s asserted…
Research
New Voices
,Apr 14, 2020
New Discussions with DPIC Podcast: Denver District Attorney Beth McCann on Criminal Justice Reform and Colorado’s Death-Penalty Repeal
In the April 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Denver District Attorney Beth McCann (pictured) speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about Colorado’s repeal of capital punishment. McCann was elected DA in 2016, as part of a nationwide wave of reform-oriented prosecutors. Both as prosecutor and in her eight years in the Colorado legislature, McCann has advocated for broad criminal justice reforms, including the abolition of the death penalty. In her…
Issues
Feb 06, 2020
News Brief— Sonny Boy Oats to Come Off Florida’s Death Row After 39 Years
NEWS (2/6/20): Sonny Boy Oats will come off Florida’s death row after 39 years, prosecutors announced on February 6. Oats was convicted and sentenced to death in Marion County in 1981. His lawyers have argued that executing Oats would be unconstitutional because he is intellectually disabled. With eight of nine psychiatrists and psychologists who evaluated Oats concluding that he is intellectually disabled, State Attorney Ric Ridgway told the court that his office would no longer contest Oats’…
Research
New Voices
,Feb 04, 2020
Twenty-One Virginia Prosecutors Sign Letter Urging Repeal of Death Penalty
Calling the death penalty “a failed government program,” 21 current and former Virginia prosecutors have signed on to a letter to the commonwealth’s General Assembly urging the legislature to abolish capital punishment. The letter was signed by former Attorneys General Mark L. Earley, Sr., a Republican who presided over 36 executions during 13 years in office, and Democrat William G. Broaddus, nine current or former Commonwealth’s Attorneys elected across the state, and 12 other former homicide…
Issues
Victims' Families
,New Voices
,Federal Death Penalty
,Nov 13, 2019
Former State and Federal Judges, Prosecutors, and Law Enforcement Officials and Families of Murder Victims Urge Federal Government to Call Off Executions
Hundreds of former state and federal judges, prosecutors, law enforcement and corrections officials, and family members of homicide victims have signed on to a series of letters urging the federal government to halt the five federal executions scheduled for December 2019 and January 2020. In four separate letters addressed to President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr, 175 family members of murder victims, 65 former state and federal judges, 59 current and former state and federal…
Issues
Victims' Families
,Nov 08, 2019
Jurors Speak About Decision to Impose Life Sentence in Florida Case at Center of Conflict Between Prosecutor and Governor
On March 16, 2017, saying that capital punishment is “not in the best interests of this community or in the best interests of justice,” Orange/Osceola County (FL) state prosecutor Aramis Ayala announced that her office would not pursue the death penalty in any case. That decision, announced in connection with the prosecution of a man charged with killing his ex-girlfriend, her unborn child, and a police officer responding to the crime, ignited a political firestorm in which then-Florida Gov.
Issues
New Voices
,Nov 05, 2019
Idaho Prosecutor Says State’s Longest-Serving Death-Row Prisoner Should Not Be Executed
The prosecutor who sent Thomas Creech, Idaho’s longest-serving death-row prisoner, to jail 37 years ago now says that Creech and others sentenced to death in the Gem State should not be executed. Jim Harris (pictured), former County Prosecutor for Ada County, sought the death penalty against Creech in 1982. Creech, who was first sentenced to death in another case in 1976, has spent more time in prison than any other person on the state’s death row, but in the years since Harris obtained a…
Issues
New Voices
,Jul 18, 2019
Philadelphia District Attorney Asks Pennsylvania Supreme Court to Strike Down State’s Death Penalty
Citing race disparities, ineffective representation by court-appointed lawyers, and arbitrary case outcomes, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to strike down the state’s death penalty. In a brief filed on July 15, 2019 in the consolidated appeals of Philadelphia death-row prisoner Jermont Cox and Northumberland County’s Kevin Marinelli, the District Attorney’s office argued that Pennsylvania’s death penalty “has repeatedly been handed out in an…
Issues
New Voices
,Jul 15, 2019
Books: “Arbitrary Death” Reveals a Prosecutor’s Evolution on Capital Punishment
Rick Unklesbay served as a prosecutor in the Pima County Attorney’s Office in Arizona for nearly four decades, prosecuting more than 100 homicides, including sixteen in which death sentences were imposed. He put Don Miller on death row and, in November 2000, watched as Arizona put Miller to death. In Arbitrary Death: A Prosecutor’s Perspective on the Death Penalty, Unklesbay tells the story of nine of those death-penalty cases and how the arbitrary nature of the U.S. justice system has changed…
Issues
Jun 19, 2019
ACLU Study: Los Angeles Death Penalty Discriminates Against Defendants of Color and the Poor
A new study of the use of capital punishment in Los Angeles has concluded that, throughout the administration of District Attorney Jackie Lacey (pictured) the death penalty has “discriminate[d] on the basis of race and against the poor.” The study, released June 18, 2019 by the ACLU, reported that under Lacey’s administration the Los Angeles death penalty has been imposed exclusively against defendants of color, disproportionately for killings of white victims, and disproportionately in cases…