The 10th Annual March to Stop Executions will be held in Austin on October 24, 2009. Each October since 2000, people from all walks of life and all parts of Texas, the U.S. and other countries have taken a day out of their year and gathered in Austin to raise their voices together and loudly express their opposition to the death penalty. The march started in Austin in 2000. In 2007 and 2008, the march was held in Houston. This year, it is coming back to Austin.

The photo above, which appeared in the New York Times, is from the 1st march in 2000.

The annual march is organized by several Texas anti-death penalty organizations, including the Austin chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Texas Moratorium Network, the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement and Texas Students Against the Death Penalty. If your organization would like to be a co-sponsor of the 10th Annual March, contact any of the organizations listed above and let them know, so we can list you in future announcements.

The first march was called the “March on the Mansion” and was held on October 15, 2000. The second and third marches were called “March for a Moratorium” and were held on October 27, 2001 and October 12, 2002. In 2003, the march name changed to “March to Stop Executions”. Clarence Brandley, who had been exonerated and released from death row in 1990 after spending nine years there, spoke at the 2003 march, saying “I was always wishing and hoping that someone would just look at the evidence and the facts, because the evidence was clear that I did not commit the crime.” The “5th Annual March to Stop Executions” was on October 30, 2004. The “6th Annual March to Stop Executions” was held October 29, 2005 in conjunction with the 2005 National Conference of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, which came to Austin at the suggestion of the march organizers.

The “7th Annual March to Stop Executions”, which was sponsored by a record number of 50 organizations, was held October 28, 2006 and included family members of Carlos De Luna and Cameron Todd Willingham, who both had been the subject of separate investigations by The Chicago Tribune that concluded they were probably innocent people executed by Texas. Standing outside the gates of the Texas Governor’s Mansion with hundreds of supporters, the families of Willingham and De Luna delivered separate letters to Governor Perry asking him to stop executions and investigate the cases of Willingham and De Luna to determine if they were wrongfully executed. After DPS troopers refused to take the letters, Mary Arredondo, sister of Carlos De Luna, and Eugenia Willingham, stepmother of Todd, dropped them through the gate of the governor’s mansion and left them lying on the walkway leading to the main door.

The “8th Annual March to Stop Executions” was held in Houston on October 27. 2007. The “9th Annual March to Stop Executions” was October 25, 2008 in Houston.

More details, such as the time and route of the march, will be announced later.

From Soujourners magazine, Richard A. Viguerie, one of the nation’s most prominent conservatives, explains why he opposes the death penalty:

“The fact is, I don’t understand why more conservatives don’t oppose the death penalty. It is, after all, a system set up under laws established by politicians (too many of whom lack principles); enforced by prosecutors (many of whom want to become politicians—perhaps a character flaw?—and who prefer wins over justice); and adjudicated by judges (too many of whom administer personal preference rather than the law).

“Conservatives have every reason to believe the death penalty system is no different from any politicized, costly, inefficient, bureaucratic, government-run operation, which we conservatives know are rife with injustice. But here the end result is the end of someone’s life. In other words, it’s a government system that kills people.

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The death penalty system is flawed and untrustworthy because human institutions always are. But even when guilt is certain, there are many downsides to the death penalty system. I’ve heard enough about the pain and suffering of families of victims caused by the long, drawn-out, and even intrusive legal process. Perhaps, then, it’s time for America to re-examine the death penalty system, whether it works, and whom it hurts.

“On how society would ever get to the point of abolishing the death penalty, if it were to do that, I have my conservative views. It must be done in a way consistent with our constitutional system. That means it cannot be imposed by the courts or by the federal government (except for federal cases). In my opinion, the Constitution does not grant the federal government the authority to ban the death penalty in the states. That must be left to the people’s representatives in their respective states, which also means that judges must not take it upon themselves.

“This is why I am joining my friend Jim Wallis in a coalition of liberals and conservatives calling for a national moratorium and conversation about the death penalty, so people can study, learn, think, pray if they wish, about whether or how the various state death-penalty systems should be changed. I hope you’ll join us”.

Richard A. Viguerie has been called “one of the creators of the modern conservative movement” by The Nation magazine.

The all-Republican Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which is led by Presiding Judge Sharon Keller, yesterday rejected the latest appeal of Rodney Reed. (Keller’s own trial on charges of bias, misconduct and incompetence from the State Commission on Judicial Conduct starts August 17 in San Antonio.) The CCA in the past has declined to grant relief for other innocent people who were later released after taking their cases to federal courts, including Ernest Willis and Kerry Cook. Reed now heads to the federal level for his next appeals where, like others before him, he may find more qualified judges than those on the CCA will rule in his favor.

From the Austin American-Statesman:

The state’s highest criminal court has again rejected death row inmate Rodney Reed’s claims that he did not kill Stacey Stites, a 19-year-old who was raped and strangled in Bastrop County in 1996.

Reed’s case now is expected to move into the federal court system for his next — and final — round of appeals before his execution can be scheduled.

Reed’s latest appeal built on allegations, contained in earlier court petitions, that Stites was murdered by her then-fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, a former Georgetown and Giddings police officer who was later sentenced to 10 years in prison for kidnapping and improper sexual activity with a woman in his custody.

But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Wednesday that the latest allegations against Fennell did not change the case against Reed.

“The allegations of Fennell’s misconduct and domestic violence do not exonerate (Reed),” the court ruled in an unanimous, unsigned opinion. “The totality of the evidence before us still supports a guilty verdict.”

Reed’s latest appeal included information compiled by Georgetown police during their investigation into an October 2007 incident when Fennell responded to a domestic disturbance call, drove the woman to a secluded area in his patrol car and sexually assaulted her.

According to police reports detailed in Reed’s appeal, Fennell also forced a woman he met during a Georgetown traffic stop in July 2007 to have sex with him, abused his now ex-wife and stalked a Giddings woman in 1997 while working for the Giddings Police Department.

Reed’s lawyers argued that the new information, coupled with earlier allegations of Fennell’s misconduct, points to Fennell as Stites’ killer. They also claim no jury would have convicted Reed had it known about Fennell’s abusive history with women.

The New York Times today has a long article on the Yogurt Shop case, “New Evidence Opens Old Wound in 1991 Slaying of 4 Girls“. Last week, Robert Springsteen and Mike Scott were released from jail on personal recognizance bonds. They both had been incarcerated more than ten years before their convictions were overturned. Springsteen had spent four years under a death sentence before his death sentence was commuted to life because the U.S. Supreme Court banned executions of juvenile offenders. A judge released them after the DA said she was not ready to begin a new trial for either of them because she can not identify whom the new DNA evidence belongs to, although it does not belong to either Scott of Springsteen or anyone else so far associated with the case.

In the Times article, the wife of Mike Scott, Jeannine, said the authorities were grasping at straws. “They have got a sinking ship,” she said, “and they are trying to figure out how to save it.”

AUSTIN, Tex. — Seventeen years have come and gone. The yogurt shop where four teenage girls were raped and murdered has been replaced with a payday loan store. No sign remains of the fire the killers set to cover their tracks; no plaque marks the place where the girls died.

Yet this city has been unable to put the horrific crime to rest. Last week, two men who were awaiting retrial for the murders walked out of jail on bond after new evidence surfaced suggesting that someone else might have taken part in the attack.

The men, Michael Scott, 35, and Robert Springsteen, 34, had been convicted in one of the slayings years ago, but an appeals court overturned the verdict, ruling that the men’s confessions were improperly used against each other.

Now the new evidence — an unknown man’s DNA found on at least one of the girls — has thrown those confessions into doubt. The district attorney’s office has tested scores of people, hunting for the mystery person.

Defense lawyers argue that the DNA belongs to the true killer and proves their contention that the confessions of the convicted men were a coerced mass of falsehoods. But the authorities say investigators may have contaminated the evidence.

The events have raised two possibilities deeply troubling to many in this city, which is home to both the state Capitol and the University of Texas. One is that two innocent men have served nine years in prison for a crime they did not commit. The other is that there might be another killer out there.

“We wanted this case to be closed, but there is this gnawing sense that perhaps it wasn’t,” said Thomas Spencer, the head of an association of ministers in Austin. “We wish we had more certainty.”

Click here to read the entire article.Here is a video of the welcome home celebration for Mike Scott.

Last week a Houston jury awarded a man $5 million dollars for his wrongful conviction that had been caused by the Houston Police Crime Lab. Now, the Houston Chronicle is reporting that another man, who has spent 15 years on death row, is saying that faulty DNA analysis by the HPD crime lab resulted in his wrongful conviction.

A death row inmate from Houston, whose conviction is receiving new scrutiny after DNA tests contradicted evidence in his case, will return to court next week where his lawyer will seek his release or a new trial.

A Harris County jury sentenced Charles D. Raby to death in the 1994 murder of a 72-year-old woman assaulted and stabbed in her own home. It is a case that once again highlights errors in work from the Houston Police Department crime lab, with the city’s own expert calling the original testimony “incorrect … and not supported.”

State District Judge Joan Campbell on Monday is scheduled to resume a hearing that began in January when Raby’s lawyer presented new DNA tests on scrapings from the victim’s fingernails, which include no evidence from Raby. Since then, his case has stalled as prosecutors and the Houston Police Department sought expert opinions.

Raby’s lawyer, Sarah Frazier, goes so far as to call the crime lab evidence presented at trial false and claimed prosecutors failed to disclose information about the forensic tests that could have helped Raby before his 1994 trial.

“Trying to pretend that Mr. Raby’s trial was at all legitimate is becoming more and more strained,” Frazier said. “He clearly is entitled to a new trial after all this time.”

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Police arrested Raby in the 1994 stabbing death of Edna M. Franklin, a grandmother who lived alone in her north Houston home.

At Raby’s trial, jurors heard testimony from HPD crime lab analyst Joseph Chu, who told them that tests conducted on scrapings from under Franklin’s fingernails were inconclusive.

Years later, as revelations about chronic problems at the HPD crime lab came to light, Raby’s case received a second look.

Experts questioned Chu’s conclusions. Patricia Hamby, an expert hired by HPD, found that Chu had strayed from accepted procedures for body-fluid testing and had drawn faulty conclusions.

“The reporting of the blood typing of the ‘fingernails’ as ‘inconclusive’ … is contrary to and not supported by the recorded laboratory results,” Hamby wrote in a report last month to Irma Rios, HPD’s crime lab director.

In 2005, the Court of Criminal Appealsapproved DNA testing on the fingernail scrapings. A private lab in California last year completed analyses that revealed the profiles of two men. They matched neither Raby nor Franklin’s two grandsons.

“The grandsons’ exclusion is significant because these were the only individuals who had regular contact with the victim — a frail, malnourished woman in her 70s who rarely left her home or entertained strangers,” Frazier wrote.

In fact, a forensic expert hired by Raby’s lawyers testified in January that it is rare to find foreign DNA under a crime victim’s fingernails, and that if often can be traced to the person’s partner or attacker.

“In their wildest dreams (prosecutors) could not imagine a scenario where there wasn’t somebody else involved,” Frazier suggested. “I would love to see, not just a new trial, but let’s have a new investigation. Let’s find out who it is.”

At his trial, prosecutors also presented evidence on Raby’s background. They argued that he was a 22-year-old parolee with a violent history who had been taken in by Franklin at her grandson’s request, but who had turned on her when she told him he no longer was welcome. Learn more information on pleading guilty in Denver, CO on this website and contact lawyers near you.

They also introduced a confession, which Raby and his lawyer now say was coerced. They note inconsistencies between the facts of the crime and his statement. Those discrepancies also caught the attention of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which in a 2005 opinion wrote “in his statement (Raby) did not say he stabbed the victim. In some aspects (his) statement contradicts the testimony of police officers about the physical evidence from the crime scene.”