Entries tagged with “Witness to Innocence”
Apr 09, 2025
Paul House, Death Row Exoneree and Activist, Dies at 63
Paul“Greg” House, who spent twenty-two years on Tennessee’s death row before his exoneration in 2009, died at the age of 63 on March 25, 2025, from complications of pneumonia following years of living with multiple sclerosis. His case was one of the rare cases to meet the stringent“actual innocence” exception to habeas rules that today prevent many other petitioners from even presenting their claims of innocence in court. Mr. House was sentenced to death in…
Oct 11, 2024
French and German Embassies Host a Discussion on Innocence and the Death Penalty
On October 11, 2024 the Embassies of France and Germany hosted a discussion on the question of innocence and the death penalty at the residence of the French Ambassador in Washington, D.C. Panelists included Herman Lindsey, a death row exoneree and Executive Director of Witness to Innocence; Vanessa Potkin, Director of Special Litigation at the Innocence Project; and Emmjolee Mendoza Waters, Director of the Death Penalty Abolition Program at Catholic Mobilizing Network. The…
Issues
Feb 19, 2021
National Geographic Publishes Feature Story on Innocence and the Death Penalty
For the first time in its history, National Geographic magazine has tackled the subject of capital punishment. Sentenced to death, but innocent, a feature story in the March 2021 issue of the magazine, chronicles the stories of fifteen death-row exonerees and illuminates the pervasive issue of innocence and the death penalty in the United States. The article, released on the same day as the Death Penalty Information Center’s new…
Issues
Jan 06, 2021
Witness to Innocence Releases #ImLivingProof Video Series
Witness to Innocence, the national organization of U.S. death-row exonerees, has released a series of short videos under the tag “#ImLivingProof,” featuring the stories of men and women who had been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death. The series, produced by filmmaker Martin Schoeller with funding from the Art for Justice Fund, attempts to personalize the dangers of the death penalty by showing the public living proof that innocent people…
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Oct 22, 2020
World and European Day Against the Death Penalty: Expert Panel Discusses Systemic Flaws in U.S. Death Penalty
Expressing the hope“that we’ll be able to celebrate very soon, together with the American people, the abolition of the death penalty in the United States,” European Union Ambassador to the United States Stavros Lambrinidis opened the EU in the USA and Council of the Europe’s virtual commemoration of World and European Day Against the…
Issues
Nov 16, 2018
DPIC Analysis: The Decline of the Death Penalty in Philadelphia
During his election campaign, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner described the economic wastefulness of city prosecutors’ pursuit of the death penalty as“lighting money on fire.” A DPIC analysis of the outcomes of the more than 200 death sentences imposed in the city since 1978 (click here to enlarge image) and the last seven years of capital prosecution outcomes provides strong support for Krasner’s…