An organization in France, poster4tomorrow, is holding a poster design contest around the theme that “the death penalty is not justice. I don’t want it done in my name, my country, or our world”.
The call for entires closes on July 18, 2010.
Download the competition rules and regulations here. 
Take a look at the jury here.


They will be holding exhibitions of the winning designs in 100 cities around the world on October 10, 2010. We have emailed them expressing interest in holding an exhibition in a Texas city, since Texas executes more people than any other U.S. state. 


October the 10th 2010 (10/10/10) is the World and European Day against the Death Penalty. On this day we intend to hold 100 exhibitions in 100 cities, curated by 100 local partner organisations. We want to make every exhibition locally relevant by allowing each local team to select part of the posters they want to display.

In this way we hope that every exhibition will become more powerful than was possible last year, as the posters will hopefully relate to, and resonate more powerfully in, every location.

But it’s not just about local focus, we plan to encourage exchanges between the various events around the world by recording and streaming the talks given by hosts in different locations.

On the online side of things, we plan to add mapping and other features for anyone to easily explore all the events and take part. For instance, by making it possible for every poster to be freely downloadable, so anyone can hold their own exhibition in their window, school, wherever and everywhere.


The best 100 designs (as selected by the jury) will be exhibited in 100 locations worldwide on October the 10th in the poster for tomorrow ‘death is not justice’ exhibition.

The best 100 designs will be also be collected and published in a book to be distributed internationally. Every designer of the 100 final posters is entitled to a copy of the book free of charge, but will be asked to cover the postage costs at their own expense. Sorry.

Some of our sponsors have kindly agreed to help us reward the 10 most outstanding designs.
étapes magazine will award ten designers, as chosen by the jury, a subscription to the international issue of the magazine.

école intuit/lab in Paris will award three students, as chosen by the jury, with a free workshop on graphic design.
We’re particularly happy to be able to reward the 10 most outstanding designs, as chosen by the jury, by making them part of the permanent collection of the prestigious design museums in the list below. More design museums are expected to join in the next months.

Texas is scheduled to execute Samuel Bustamante Tuesday, April 27. His attorneys are seeking to stop the execution on grounds of mental retardation, according to this Houston Chronicle article. If he is executed, he will be the 454th person executed in Texas since 1982 and the 215th person since Rick Perry became governor.

Use the Governor’s email form to contact Perry to express your opposition to this execution. Or call Perry and leave a voice mail at 512 463 1782.

Click here to join the Texas Moratorium Network Facebook page to stay informed about the Texas death penalty.

From the Houston Chronicle:

Samuel Bustamante, 40, an El Campo laborer, is set to be executed for the crime Tuesday. He would be the seventh killer executed in the state this year and the fourth from Fort Bend County since Texas resumed executions in 1982.

Bustamante’s attorney, Philip Hilder, last week filed a state court appeal arguing that Bustmante, with an overall IQ of 71, is mildly mentally retarded and should be spared death under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 ruling in Atkins vs. Virginia. In that landmark decision the high court held that executing mentally retarded killers violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

Seeks delay from court

Hilder argued that Bustamante’s abusive childhood might have been a factor in his retardation, and offered comments from the killer’s former common-law wife that he had been childlike and unable to care for himself. When sad or angered, the woman told a Baylor College of Medicine clinical neuropsychologist, Bustamante would roll into a fetal position and cry.

Hilder asked the court to grant Bustamante direct relief or to order an evidentiary hearing to consider evidence of mental retardation.

Bustamante’s accomplices, Diedrick Depriest, Arthur Escamilla and Walter Escamilla, were each sentenced to eight years for aggravated robbery. All since have been released.

Rick Casey of the Houston Chronicle writes in his column today about a Republican judge in Houston who jailed the wife of a defendant who had just been acquitted of murder for reacting to the acquittal with relief. Judge Susan Brown of Houston’s 185th Criminal Court  (see photo left), whose insensitivity and callousness brings to mind Judge Sharon Keller, is being opposed in the November election by Democrat Vivian King. 


Click here to join the Texas Moratorium Network Facebook page to stay informed about the Texas death penalty.

From the Houston Chronicle:

Last week she warned everyone in the courtroom not to react in any way when the verdict was read after a four-day murder trial.

When the jury pronounced the defendant “not guilty,” the defendant’s wife nevertheless reacted with some combination of relief and delight.

The judge gave her three days in jail for contempt.

How sensitive? Judge Brown said the woman was “screaming and flailing and yelling,” adding she had “never seen anything quite like it.”

But four other witnesses described it differently.

The defendant, the defense attorney and two jurors had varying memories. One heard the woman say, “Thank God.” One heard her say, “Amen.” Two heard a brief scream or squeal. None saw her flailing about.

I’m not naming the defendant or his wife because her co-workers aren’t aware her husband was accused of murder, and I think she need not be punished further.

The defendant had been in jail awaiting trial for about 18 months, so it was considerable relief to his wife when he was found not guilty.

“I think my wife said, ‘Amen.’ She said it one time,” the defendant said.

“She was crying when they took her off to jail. She don’t eat meat, so she couldn’t eat the food they gave her.”

Though she was sentenced to three days, she was let out after 36 hours, spending Thursday and Friday nights in jail.

Tyrone Moncriffe, the defendant’s attorney, remembered the woman as saying “Thank God.”

“She had been under a lot of stress and strain for almost two years,” said Moncriffe, a veteran defense attorney who is board-certified in criminal law.

He said he’d never seen a judge jail someone for such behavior.

‘Oh hell’

Juror Mark Enns said he heard the woman make a noise “like a quick squeal.” He said his view of her was partly blocked, but he didn’t see any flailing about.

When I told him the woman was the defendant’s wife and had been sent to jail, he said, “Oh hell.

Vivian King, Judge Brown’s Democratic opponent in the November election, said:

“It wasn’t an angry thing,” she said of the wife’s outburst. “Every black preacher teaches us to thank the Lord.”

King, who like the wife is African-American, said of Brown’s action, “I don’t think it was racism, just a lack of cultural understanding.”

Please sign the email petition urging Chair Bradley and other members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission to make all of its committee meetings open to the public and the media.

The “Investigative Committee on the Willingham/Willis Case” of the Texas Forensic Science Commission is holding secret, private, closed door meetings without any public notice to discuss the Cameron Todd Willingham investigation.

Other committees of the TFSC are also being held in secret. Since the four-person Willingham/Willis committee does not form a quorum of the entire nine member Commission, it is not subject to the Open Meetings Act — which means it can legally deliberate in secret. However, the members of the Commission can vote to make all meetings public and to follow the rules of the Open Meetings Act.

Unless, the policy is changed, the public will not be privy to discussions by the four-member panel of the Commission that is responsible for scrutinizing the reliability of the arson investigation used to convict Todd Willingham.

Instead, the panel will report its conclusions to the nine-member commission, which will make the matter final.

Asked if he favored allowing the public to attend such sessions, TFSC Chair John Bradley responded, “No,”.

If you believe that all subcommittee meetings of the Texas Forensic Science Commission should be public and not private, secret closed door meetings, then please join us in writing commission Chair John Bradley and other Commission members urging them to make the meetings public and to post notices on the Commission website of when and where the subcommittee meetings will take place.

Shortly before Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 for an arson that killed his three young daughters, Texas Governor Rick Perry had received a request that he delay the execution based on an arson expert’s report that evidence presented at the trial did not show that the fire had been deliberately set.

Dr. Craig Beyler, one of the nation’s top arson experts, who after a search was hired by the Forensic Science Commission to investigate the case, submitted a report to the Commission in 2009 that the fire may well have not been caused by arson at all.

Secret, closed-door thwart transparency and erode public confidence in the commission’s work, which has already been compromised by Governor Rick Perry’s abrupt dismissal of the previous chair and three other members of the TFSC two days before the Commmission was scheduled to discuss the report by Dr Craig Beyler.

Please add your name to the list of people urging Chair Bradley and other members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission to make all of its committee meetings open to the public and the media.

Video of TV News Report: Forensic Science Commission Holding Secret Closed Meetings in Todd Willingham Case

If you believe that all subcommittee meetings of the Texas Forensic Science Commission should be public and not private, secret closed door meetings, then please join us in writing commission Chair John Bradley (photo left) and other members urging them to make the meetings public and to post notices on their website of when and where the subcommittee meetings will take place.
The address is:

Texas Forensic Science Commission
Sam Houston State University
College of Criminal Justice
Box 2296
816 17th Street
Huntsville, Texas 77341-2296

Fax: 1-888-305-2432
E-mail: info@fsc.state.tx.us

Report of today’s meeting from the Dallas Morning News:

Bradley meets the press. Asked about the pace of the Willingham case ahead, he says it will proceed as appropriate. Asked if he would set a timetable, he says no. He says that would be arbitrary.

Asked about the newly configured, four-person Willingham committee, he says it will meet in private. Why not public? “I don’t think it’s in the best interest of how we choose to do things.” Asked who decided the Willingham committees will meet privately, he says the committee did. (I should point out that the assistant AG attending today’s session advised the commission that the committee were only made official today and that they couldn’t have made official decisions at their organizing meetings last week.)

Bradley cuts off questions before I could ask him particulars of what the committee will tackle at its next meeting.

Talking with Commissioner Evans, the Fort Worth defense attorney, who says it was news to him that the committee will be meeting in private. Should it be? Evans says he would have no objection to public meetings, though he appreciates that there is a level of frankness that can help get things done behind closed doors. Overall, he says he’s willing to listen to pros and cons.

Evans says he figures that committee members will be in contact to decide what materials to review and people to talk to for their next session — whenever that is.

On his way out, Adams says it was news to him that committees will conduct business in private. He presumed they would be public. But don’t worry, he says, other members of the commission will make sure business is above-board.

From last week’s Grits for Breakfast, “Forensic commission’s Willingham committee meeting in secret“:

Committee meetings of the Forensic Science Commission are being held in secret, including a committee evaluating the Todd Willingham arson investigation which met yesterday. Death penalty activist Scott Cobb emailed FSC coordinator Leigh Tomlin to ask:

I heard your voice mail that the Complaint Screening Committee and the Investigative Committee on the Willingham/Willis Case held meetings yesterday in Dallas. When and where were they held? I didn’t see any meeting notice posted on the website. I only knew about it because I had read in the Houston Chronicle that it was going to be held next Thursday. Did the Commission provide a public notice before the meetings were held? How can the public be aware of when these meetings are going to be held in the future? Are there minutes available of the meetings yesterday?

Tomlin replied with a single sentence: “The meetings were not public meetings.”

They could be public, of course, at the discretion of the commission and the chair. But the new rules Chairman John Bradley rammed throughat the commission’s last meeting allow him to opt to have closed sessions.

Having watched that meeting online, I seriously doubt the majority of commissioners understood that this would be the result or intended to close their deliberations. This is simply the chairman exercising his discretion in the convenient absence of any rule to the contrary. This is what happens when rules aren’t publicly posted or even shared with commissioners before the day they’re required to vote on them. One hopes the commission majority will override their chairman to revisit and amend those rules, making committee hearings public and publishing their agendas just like regular commission meetings.

The Forensic Science Commission never conducted its business in secret before. What do they have to hide?