Entries tagged with “ACLU”

Nov 26, 2025

Article of Interest: ACLU Releases New Report Citing Pervasive Racial Imbalance in Capital Punishment System

On November 19, 2025, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released *Fatal Flaws: Innocence, Race and Wrongful Convictions*, the sec­ond install­ment in its mul­ti-part series exam­in­ing racial­ized and struc­tur­al fail­ures in the nation’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. The first report of the series, Fatal Flaws: Revealing the Racial and Religious Gerrymandering of the Capital Jury, explored how the process of death qual­i­fi­ca­tion dis­torts the com­po­si­tion of capital juries.

Nov 17, 2025

ACLU Files Amicus Brief for New Hampshire’s Sole Death Row Prisoner, Raising Concerns About Racial Disparities and Disproportionate Sentencing

On October 30, 2025, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Hampshire and the ACLU Capital Punishment Project joint­ly filed a 27-page ami­cus brief on behalf of Michael Addison, an African American man and the only remain­ing per­son under a death sen­tence in New Hampshire. Mr. Addison was con­vict­ed in 2008 of cap­i­tal mur­der for the fatal shoot­ing of a white Manchester police offi­cer. The fil­ing cites find­ings from the Capital Jury Project (CJP), which show that…

Religion

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Women

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Jul 08, 2025

ACLU Report Shows How Death Penalty Jury Selection Discriminates Against Black Americans, Women, and People of Faith

A new report from the ACLU doc­u­ments how the process of select­ing juries for death penal­ty cas­es sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly excludes Black prospec­tive jurors, women, and peo­ple of faith, fun­da­men­tal­ly under­min­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al promise of a tri­al by a jury of one’s peers. The report, *Fatal Flaws: Revealing the Racial and Religious Gerrymandering of the Capital Jury*, exam­ines the prac­tice of​“death qual­i­fi­ca­tion,” a require­ment that poten­tial jurors must be…

Issues

Sep 23, 2022

North Carolina ACLU Challenges Death Qualification of Jurors as Racially and Sexually Discriminatory

Lawyers for a North Carolina cap­i­tal defen­dant have filed a sweep­ing chal­lenge to the method by which death-penal­­ty jurors are empan­eled, argu­ing that the com­bi­na­tion of a process known as​“death qual­i­fi­ca­tion” and dis­cre­tionary jury strikes pro­duces a jury so racial­ly and sex­u­al­ly unrep­re­sen­ta­tive that it vio­lates a defendant’s right to…

State & Federal Info

Federal Death Penalty

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Feb 09, 2021

More Than 80 Civil Rights and Advocacy Organizations Urge President Biden to End Federal Executions

A coali­tion of 82 civ­il rights and advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions have called on President Joe Biden to hon­or his cam­paign promise of​“ensur­ing equal­i­ty, equi­ty, and jus­tice in our crim­i­nal legal sys­tem” by tak­ing exec­u­tive action to end fed­er­al exe­cu­tions. The groups, led by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, asked Biden to com­mute the sen­tences of every­one on fed­er­al death row, dis­man­tle the federal death…

Executions

Executions Overview

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Federal Death Penalty

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Sep 22, 2020

ACLU: Documents Show Federal Executions Likely Caused Prison COVID-19 Outbreak

Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act show that the fed­er­al government’s choice to bring hun­dreds of peo­ple to the fed­er­al prison com­plex in Terre Haute, Indiana to car­ry out five exe­cu­tions in July and August in the midst of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic like­ly caused a COVID-19 out­break that has already killed three and hospitalized…