Exonerees Leading March to Abolish the Death Penalty

Death row exonerees Gary Drinkard, Ron Keine and Shujaa Graham leading the 2010 March to Abolish the Death Penalty. marchforabolition.org
Upcoming Executions

Upcoming Executions

Click for a list of upcoming scheduled executions in Texas.
Innocence

Innocence

The death penalty puts innocent people at risk of execution.
Todd Willingham

Todd Willingham

Todd Willingham was wrongfully executed under Governor Rick Perry on February 17, 2004.

Take an Anti-Death Penalty Resolution to Your Texas Democratic Party Precinct Convention on March 2

By On · Add Comment · In Uncategorized

To put ending the death penalty on the Texas Democratic Party agenda, we need you to become a delegate this year to your County or Senatorial District Convention and later in June to the State Convention!
1.     The first step is to attend your Precinct Convention Tuesday, March 2 right after the polls close. Your precinct convention should begin at 7:15 p.m. the evening of the primary election (Tuesday, March 2).  Take progressive Democratic friends with you! 
 At the precinct convention you can take copies of our resolution for a moratorium on executions and one for the abolition of the death penalty and pass them out while waiting for the meeting to begin.  Also give one to the chair.  The chair will read each resolution, then there can be discussion and then a vote is taken.
Then there will be an election for delegates to the County or Senatorial District Conventions.  In the big cities, there are conventions for each Senate district.  In smaller towns, like in the Rio Grande Valley, there are County Conventions.  Nominate yourself or get a friend to nominate you.  And you nominate your progressive friends.  Then you can attend the County or Senate District conventions and again put the resolutions up for a vote.
More information can be found on the state party website here: www.txdemocrats. org/2010- precinct- conventions/
2.     Become a delegate to your County or Senatorial District Convention which will be held on Saturday, March 20. 
If you are elected to attend your county or senatorial district convention (information here:www.txdemocrats. org/2010- county-sd- conventions/) then hopefully you can get elected to the state convention.  This is much more difficult that getting elected to the County / Senatorial District, however 🙁
3.     If are elected a delegate to the State Convention, it will be held in Corpus Christi this year (June 25-26, information here: www.txdemocrats. org/2010statecon vention/).  Activists will hold a “Democrats Against the Death Penalty” caucus meeting at the TDP State Convention. The caucus was started in 2004 by Scott Cobb. In 2008, there was a record overflow turnout at the caucus of over 300 people. 
In 2008, the resolutions committee at the Texas Democratic Party State Convention approved a resolution to abolish the death penalty, but the resolution did not get taken up by the floor of the convention before the convention adjourned.  Nevertheless, it was a major success to get the abolition resolution approved by the committee.
·        What you can do at your conventions: 
1.      Pass our reasonable resolution calling for a moratorium on executions and the creation of a Texas Capital Punishment Commission and also another resolution calling for the abolition of the death penalty.  If you believe that Texas needs to stop executions, then we must use all opportunities to get our message out.   
2.     Seek out other progressives and tell them about our resolutions and ask them if they have a resolution that you can support.  There should be anti-war, environmental, and other progressive resolutions that you can give your support to.
3.     Also, approach those candidates with good criminal justice and progressive platforms.  Let them know how much you appreciate their positions on ending the Law of Parties or increasing compensation to those prisoners who have been wrongfully convicted or for reducing juvenile sentences or reducing our prison population.
What you can do BEFORE this Tuesday and your elections:  Share our resolutions on a moratorium and for abolition with your progressive friends and ask them if they will print them out and give a copy to the chair of their precinct convention. 
So, right now, e-mail these resolutions to all your friends that may vote tomorrow and ask them to help us.  Also, offer to help other progressive organizations who have resolutions.
 We will forward the abolition resolution and the moratorium resolution to other areas of the state and see how many allies can take it to their precinct, county, and senatorial districts.  The more that County and Senatorial District Conventions that pass the same resolution, the better the chances of it getting passed at the state level.
Questions? Contact the Abolition Movement at Abolition.Movement@hotmail.com or call Njeri at 713-237-713 or Gloria at 713-503-2633. 
Here are the two resolutions.  You should print up both of them.  The first one is for a moratorium on executions and the creation of a Texas Capital Punishment Commission and the other is for the abolition of the death penalty.

It would be helpful to get both passed, but if you only want to do one of them, we suggest using the second one for ABOLITION.
  Texas Democratic Party Resolution Calling for a Moratorium on Executions 
WHEREAS Texas leads the nation in executions with 449 since 1982 (as of February 1, 2010). The frequency of executions and inadequacies in our criminal justice system increase the risk that an innocent person will be executed and because the execution of an innocent person by the State of Texas would be a grave injustice and would undermine public confidence in our criminal justice system; and
WHEREAS there is a significant risk that innocence cases in Texas are not being discovered, and innocent persons both reside on death row and could be wrongly executed in a system of capital punishment that often escapes governmental scrutiny and meaningful judicial review; and

WHEREAS an innocent person may already have been executed by Texas. The Chicago Tribune reported on December 9, 2004 that a Corsicana, Texas man named Cameron Todd Willingham may have been innocent of the arson/murder for which he was executed on February 17, 2004. A state-funded report commissioned by the Texas Forensic Science Commission written by fire expert Dr Craig Beyler said that “a finding of arson could not be sustained” in the Willingham case. Beyler said that key testimony from a fire marshal at Willingham’s trial was “hardly consistent with a scientific mind-set and is more characteristic of mystics or psychics”; and

WHEREAS Rick Perry received information prior to the execution of Todd Willingham that cast serious doubt on the scientific validity of forensic evidence used to convict Willingham, but Perry refused to issue a 30 day stay of execution to give more time for the evidence to be analyzed; and
WHEREAS Rick Perry interfered with an investigation into the Willingham case when he replaced the chair and all of his gubernatorial appointees to the Texas Forensic Science Commission only days before a scheduled hearing about a report submitted to the commission by Dr Craig Beyler; and
WHEREAS the Houston Chronicle reported on November 19, 2005 that a San Antonio man named Ruben Cantu may have been innocent of the crime for which he was executed on August 24, 1993 and the Chicago Tribune reported on June 24, 2006 that a Corpus Christi man named Carlos De Luna may have been innocent of the crime for which he was executed on December 7 1989; and

WHEREAS eleven people have been exonerated of murder and released from Texas Death Row and 139 people have been exonerated and released from death rows in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970’s; and

WHEREAS local taxpayers can be faced with the financial burden of settling lawsuits when innocent people are wrongfully convicted or executed because of problems in the criminal justice system; and

WHEREAS seeking a death sentence costs three times more than the cost of seeking life without parole.

BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that the Texas Democratic Party supports a moratorium on executions and the creation of a “Texas Capital Punishment Commission” to study the administration of capital punishment in Texas to correct any injustices or unfair processes that are found in the administration of the death penalty and to study how to eliminate the risk of innocent people being convicted and executed.
Texas Democratic Party Resolution to Abolish the Death Penalty
Whereas the death penalty system is a human system that makes errors;
Whereas Texas has sent innocent people to death row;
Whereas it is impossible to correct the error of a wrongful conviction once someone has been executed;
Whereas Texas as of 2005 has life without parole as an alternative to the death penalty;
Whereas the death penalty is applied unevenly throughout the state of Texas;
Whereas the death penalty discriminates against the poor and people of color;
Whereas the death penalty does not deter others from committing violent crime;
Whereas the death penalty costs 2 to 3 times more to implement than life without parole;
Therefore be it resolved that the Texas Democratic Party supports abolishing the death penalty in Texas and using the money saved by abolition to help victims of crime and to implement crime prevention measures that are truly effective.

Five Death Row Exonerees to Speak at Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break March 15-19 in Austin, Texas

By On · Add Comment · In Uncategorized
Derrick Jamison, an innocent man who spent 17 years on death row in Ohio will be one of the speakers at the Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break, which is March 15-19, 2010 in Austin, Texas. Derrick is attending as a member of Witness to Innocence. Derrick will join exonerees Shujaa Graham, Curtis McCarty, Ron Keine and Perry Cobb at alternative spring break to speak with participants about how innocent people can end up on death row. Altogether, the five exonerees attending the alternative spring break spent a total of almost 50 years on death row for crimes they did not commit.

The Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break March 15-19 in Austin is designed for high school and college students interested in human rights and the death penalty. All the events are also open to people of all ages who are interested in the issue. In addition to five death row exonerees, there will be many other interesting speakers, including the national director of Sister Helen Prejean’s Dead Man Walking School Theatre Project, Bill Pelke of Journey of Hope, Susannah Sheffer of Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, Brian Evans from the Washington D.C. office of Amnesty International, and Elizabeth Gilbert, the friend of Todd Willingham who first brought his case to the attention of thefire expert who later sent a report to Rick Perry in support of a stay of execution.

Participants will gain valuable training and experience in grassroots organizing, lobbying, preparing a public rally and working with the media. During the week, students will immediately put what they learn into action during activities such as an Anti-Death Penalty Lobby Day with a rally at the Texas Capitol. There will be opportunities to write press releases, organize a press conference, speak in public, meet with legislators or their aides, and carry out a public rally at the capitol.


Please register at the website http://springbreakalternative.org/deathpenalty

 Derrick Jamison

derrick jamison | www.witnesstoinnocence.orgWhen James Suggs, an eyewitness to the robbery and murder of a Cincinnati bartender, was shown photo arrays of suspects by police, he identified two men—but neither of them was Derrick Jamison.  There were also multiple contradictions between physical descriptions of the perpetrators given by witnesses and Derrick’s actual appearance. This information was withheld from Jamison’s trial, and as a result, an innocent man spent nearly 20 years on Ohio’s death row for a crime he did not commit.
In February 2005, Ohio Common Pleas Judge Richard Niehaus dismissed all charges against Derrick after his conviction was overturned three years earlier. Jamison was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 based largely on the testimony of Charles Howell, a co-defendant whose own sentence was reduced in exchange for testimony against Derrick.
Statements were withheld that contradicted Howell’s testimony, undermined the prosecution’s explanation for the death, and ultimately would have incriminated other suspects for the murder. Two federal courts ruled that the prosecution’s actions denied Derrick a fair trial.
Today, Derrick is fully aware of the inequality of the criminal justice system. “There is a double standard when it comes to justice in our judicial system, especially with wrongful conviction,” he says. “If you are a minority or a low-income citizen, the pursuit of justice can be an elusive one. But if you are rich it happens overnight.”
Although his resentment towards the system is subsiding, Derrick continues to express anger about how the 17 years he spent on death row impacted his life and the lives of his family members. At the time of sentencing, he was incredibly troubled because of his unjust imprisonment. “I was very angry, furious and distraught. . . all the emotions that stir up anguish. It made me feel it was over for me. Not only did that sentence affect me, it was the demise of my mother and father.”
Derrick currently lives in Cincinnati, where he expresses daily gratitude for his release.  “In the 21 years I experienced ‘dead man walking’ I never had anything to smile about,” he says, “but on that day, I felt the smile come from within my heart. The sun shone down on me that day.”

Campaign to Save Linda Carty From Execution in Texas

By On · Add Comment · In Uncategorized

British grandmother Linda Carty was wrongfully sentenced to death by a Texan court and is now dangerously close to execution. Please watch this video about her disastrous case – and find out how you can help save her life.


How to save Linda Carty

  1. Please sign this petition NOW
  2. Follow Linda Carty’s case on Facebook, Twitter or our Save Linda Petition
  3. Sign up for updates on Linda’s case by mailing info@reprieve.org.uk
  4. Donate to our Urgent Appeal for Linda Carty

Who is Linda Carty?

After a catastrophically flawed trial, Linda Carty was sentenced to death in February 2002 and faces execution within months. She desperately needs your help.

Why is Linda Carty on death row?

Linda would certainly not be on death row today if she had had a decent defence lawyer at trial. Her story is a damning indictment of the Texas justice system, and exposes the perils of being poor and vulnerable in the USA.

Linda was born on 5 October 1958 on the Caribbean island of St Kitts to Anguillan parents and holds a UK dependent territory passport. She worked as a primary school teacher in St Kitts until she was 23, when she moved to the US to study.

After disastrous failures by her court-appointed lawyer, Linda was convicted of taking part in the murder of 25 year-old Joana Rodriguez.

The crime took place on 16 May 2001, when three men broke into the apartment of Rodriguez and her partner Raymundo Cabrera, demanding drugs and cash. They abducted Rodriguez and her four-day-old son, Ray, who was later found unharmed in a car, while Rodriguez had suffocated.

The prosecution’s rather implausible theory was that Linda was afraid of losing her common-law husband and thought that if she had another baby he would stay. Unable to get pregnant, they allege she had hired three men to kidnap Rodriguez and that she planned to steal the child – a baby of a different race to Linda.

Linda’s court-appointed lawyer was Jerry Guerinot, whose incompetence has already led to twenty of his clients ending up on death row, more than any other defence lawyer in the US. His approach to her case was at best, slapdash, at worst, wilfully inept.

Jerry Guerinot - the worst lawyer in the world?

Guerinot’s catalogue of serious failings in Linda’s case includes: failure to meet Linda until immediately before the trial, failure to inform Linda or her husband of their rights; failure to spot obvious flaws and inconsistencies in the prosecution case; failure to interview witnesses; and failure to investigate key mitigating evidence.

After her conviction, investigators from Reprieve visited St Kitts and learnt that Linda was still remembered as a passionate teacher who frequently held extra classes for children with special needs. She also taught at Sunday school, sang in a national youth choir and led a volunteer social-work group.

This information would have enabled Guerinot to present her to the jurors as a dedicated teacher and community leader – factors that might well have induced them to vote to spare her life. But although Guerinot applied to the court for funds to go to St Kitts before Linda’s trial, neither he nor his staff made the trip.

By the time the Carty family emigrated to the US in 1982, Linda had a daughter Jovelle, then two (born 10 September 1979). Shortly after Jovelle was born, Jovelle’s father emigrated to New York, leaving Linda to care for the child alone. A year after Linda moved to Houston her cousin Harriet died suddenly. Linda and Harriet were very close and Linda was devastated.

During the 80s, Linda had begun to work as a confidential informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), befriending suspected traffickers in order to get information and sometimes to make test purchases of drugs. Linda has always asserted her innocence, and believes that she was framed because of her work with the DEA.

In 1988 Linda was raped in a University of Houston car park. The rape resulted in a pregnancy and Linda gave birth to a baby girl (born 23 June 1989) who was given up for adoption. Linda felt a deep sense of shame and concealed the rape and the pregnancy from her family. Two months prior to giving birth, Linda’s beloved father died, Linda was distraught. Later, she found herself in an abusive relationship and was a victim of domestic violence.

Linda is now incarcerated at Mountain View Unit, one of ten women on death row in Texas.

Will Linda be killed?

Linda’s case is now before the Supreme Court; this is the last chance for the legal system to save her life. The Supreme Court hears only a tiny number of cases per year.

It is time to get very worried about Linda. She needs all the support she can get.

What else can I do?

After signing the petition and sending it to your friends, you can write a letter of support to Linda at: Linda Carty, # 999406, Mountainview Unit, 2305 Ransom Rd, Gatesville, Texas 76528, USA. Letters must include a return address.

Downloads

Vote for the Abolish the Death Penalty as an Idea for Change in America at Change.org

By On · Add Comment · In Uncategorized



Texas Moratorium Network sent an email out a few days ago asking people to vote for “Abolish the Death Penalty” in the Ideas for Change contest at Change.org. 236 TMN members have voted so far, which is a little more than one-quarter of the total votes of 820 as of now. Thanks for everyone who already voted. If you have not yet voted, please do. We need another hundred votes or so to move into the top ten. The idea was started at change.org by Gilles Denizot. Nice job Gilles!

Take a moment to vote for the Abolish the Death Penalty as an Idea for Change in America at Change.org. (You will have to register atChange.org to vote.) If the idea becomes one of the top ten, Change.org will host an event in Washington, DC, where each of the 10 ideas will be presented to representatives of the media, the nonprofit community, and to relevant officials in the Obama Administration. After the announcement, Change.org will mobilize the full resources of their staff, their 1 million community members, and their extended network of bloggers to support a series of grassroots campaigns to turn each idea into reality.


This is the second annual ideas competition powered by Change.org. The first competition was launched immediately following the 2008 presidential election, during which time people submitted more than 7,500 ideas and 650,000 votes.

How it Works
Beginning January 20, 2010, individuals and organizations everywhere can (1) submit ideas for change they want to see implemented, (2) discuss these ideas with others, and (3) vote for their favorite ideas and promote them across the web.
During the first round of voting, ideas will be organized into 20 different issue-based categories. First round voting ends at 5pm ET on February 25th, at which point the three top ranked ideas in each category will advance to the second (and final) round of voting, starting March 1, 2010 . In this final round, all 60 qualifying ideas (top three in each of 20 categories) will be in open competition. The final round of voting concludes at 5pm ET on March 11th, and the 10 most popular ideas at the conclusion of voting will be named winners – the “Top 10 Ideas for Change in America.”
The Top 10 Ideas for Change in America
To formally announce the winners, Change.org will host an event in Washington, DC, whereeach of these top 10 ideas will be presented to representatives of the media, the nonprofit community, and to relevant officials in the Obama Administration. After the announcement, Change.org will mobilize the full resources of their staff, their 1 million community members, and their extended network of bloggers to support a series of grassroots campaigns to turn each idea into reality.
How to Turn this Idea into Reality?
We need to remain first and be amongst the Top 10 Ideas for Change in America on March 4th, 2010. We need to build a movement to support this idea and bring it to Washington D.C.
  • We need to VOTE NOW..
  • We need to TELL FRIENDS (click on email below).
  • We need to SHARE the idea around us, on Facebook, on Twitter, everywhere.
  • We need to POST the WIDGET on our personal webpages (find the code here, simply copy & paste it where you want it to appear).

We need to understand that it will ONLY happen if we do what we need to make it happen. And we only have until February 25th, 2010! Let’s get ready for Washington D.C.


David Dow to Appear for Book Reading Tonight in Austin at Book People

By On · Add Comment · In Uncategorized

David Dow will speak tonight at 7 PM at Book People in Austin Texas. Dow is professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center and an internationally recognized figure in the fight against the death penalty. He is the founder and director of the Texas Innocence Network. He lives in Houston, Texas.  His new book is “The Autobiography of an Execution”
  Interview from Time.com with David Dow:


Some two thirds of Americans support the death penalty, but few are forced to confront it on a daily basis. As an appellate lawyer in Texas — which leads the U.S. in executions — David Dow has represented more than 100 death-row inmates over the past two decades. In The Autobiography of an Execution, he recounts what it’s like to do the job and then come home to his family and his dog. He talked to TIME about why he keeps doing the work, the problem with juries and what it’s like to look murderers in the eye.
You call the capital punishment system “racist, classist, [and] unprincipled,” but say you feel sympathy for people who support the death penalty. How can the two co-exist? 
On a regular basis, I’m sitting face to face with murderers. When I imagine sitting face to face with somebody who might have injured somebody I love or care about, I can imagine wanting to injure that person myself. I used to support the death penalty. [But] once I started doing the work, I became aware of the inequalities. I tell people that if you’re going to commit murder, you want to be white, and you want to be wealthy — so that you can hire a first-class lawyer — and you want to kill a black person. And if [you are], the odds of your being sentenced to death are basically zero. It’s one thing to say that rich people should be able to drive Ferraris and poor people should have to take the bus. It’s very different to say that rich people should get treated one way by the state’s criminal justice system and poor people should get treated another way. But that is the system that we have.
Was there a particularly egregious case that helped you come to that conclusion? 
It was incremental. Almost everybody I represented actually committed the murder that he was sent to death row for committing. But what I noticed is that they were committing murders that were not, in any meaningful sense, different from the thousands of other murders that occur where the person isn’t on death row. You have about 15,000 homicides a year in the U.S. And you might have 60 executions. There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to which crimes were resulting in executions, other than the operation of what I consider to be insidious types of prejudice and just sheer randomness.
You describe Derrick, your first client who was executed, as “a bad guy.” And yet you were clearly torn up by his death. What’s it like to develop a personal connection with unsavory characters? 
Most of the cases I work on are tragic, but at a very deep level they make sense to me. I understand how [the crime] happened. Most of my clients dropped out of school; they’ve got extensive juvenile records; they came from backgrounds of deprivation. I’m not saying that excuses their conduct. I’m simply saying that there were any number of points in the lives of my clients where I truly believe that if society had intervened more aggressively, it could have done something. In other cases, though, I don’t see that at all. There wasn’t any deprivation and there wasn’t abuse and there wasn’t poverty. Those are the cases that just make you stay awake at night.
You are pretty critical of some death penalty lawyers. Why? 
The cases that I write about are cases that I was handling 5 years ago, which means that the trials were 15 years ago. And 15 years ago, the quality of trial lawyers in Texas, and really all over the so-called Death Penalty Belt — the southeast of the U.S. — was typically abysmal. Over the last 5 years, the quality of trial lawyering has gotten vastly better. There are still a handful of bad lawyers. [But] today the problem is that there aren’t any resources. You can have the world’s greatest lawyer. And if the lawyer doesn’t have resources [to hire experts], then it doesn’t matter.
What’s your opinion of the juries you’ve encountered? 
Juries can sentence somebody to death for the same reasons that kids in a gang will do something that they wouldn’t do if they were by themselves. The group diffuses moral responsibility. I really do believe that jurors take their responsibility very seriously, particularly in a death penalty trial. But I think that being a member of a group allows individual jurors to slough off the responsibility for the decision. That diffusion of responsibility continues up until the very end: the judges on the court of appeals are one of three or one of nine. It’s a system where you can’t ever point to a single person and say, that person is responsible for imposing the death sentence.
What do you think is the future of capital punishment in the U.S.? 
My prediction is that we’re going to get rid of it for economic reasons. We spend at least a million dollars more on a death penalty case than on a non-death penalty case. In the U.S., where we’ve executed 1200 people since the death penalty [was reinstated in 1976], that’s $1.2 billion. I just think, gosh, with $1.2 billion, you could hire a lot of policemen. You could have a lot of educational programs inside of prisons so that when people come out of prison they know how to do something besides rob convenience stores and sell drugs. There are already counties in Texas, of all places, that have said, this is just not worth it: let’s fix the schools and fill the potholes in the streets instead of squandering this money on a death penalty case. You don’t need to be a bleeding heart to make that argument.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1967233,00.html#ixzz0gLgmNSrQ

Page 117 of 358« First...102030...115116117118119...130140150...Last »
%d bloggers like this: