Tune in to CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday, May 4 to learn more about the Innocence Project of Texas’s involvement in securing the release of James Lee Woodard, who served more than 27 years in prison for a Dallas County murder that he has always maintained he did not commit. Woodard’s release came about as a result of more than 1000 man hours spent by IPOT and the Dallas County District Attorney’s office investigating his claim of actual innocence. His story will be told in a compelling segment about the efforts of Dallas County’s Conviction Integrity Unit and its collaboration with the Innocence Project of Texas to review more than 400 cases where post-conviction DNA testing was denied by previous Dallas D.A. Administrations.

From the New York Times, May 3, 2008:

Experts say the resumption of executions is likely to throw a strong new spotlight on the divisive national — and international — issue of capital punishment.

“When people confront a new wave of executions, they’ll be questioning not only how people are executed but whether people should be executed,” said James R. Acker, a historian of the death penalty and a criminal justice professor at the State University at Albany.

Texas leads the list with five people now set to die here in the Walls Unit, the state’s death house, between June 3 and Aug. 20. Virginia is next with four. Louisiana, Oklahoma and South Dakota have also set execution dates.

Some welcome the end of the moratorium.

More inmates whose appeals have expired are certain to be added to execution rosters soon, including, in all likelihood, Jack Harry Smith, who, at 70, is the oldest of the 360 men and 9 women on Texas’ death row (though hardly a row any more, but an entire compound). Mr. Smith has been under a death sentence for 30 years for a robbery killing at a grocery in the Houston area.

“If it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go,” said Mr. Smith, who maintains his innocence and was delivered by guards for a prison interview in a wheelchair.

Yet public support for capital punishment may be dwindling. Death sentences have been on the decline, and a poll last year by death penalty opponents found Americans losing confidence in the death penalty.

“There will be more executions than people have the stomach for, at least in many parts of the country,” said Stephen B. Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, a leading anti-death-penalty litigation clinic.

Last year, Texas accounted for 26 of the 42 executions nationwide. That includes the last two people executed before the Supreme Court signaled a moratorium on executions while considering whether the chemical formula used for lethal injection in Kentucky inflicted pain amounting to unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment. The justices ruled 7 to 2 on April 16 that it did not, while allowing for possible future challenges.

But the scheduling of executions comes as prosecutors and juries have been turning away from the death penalty, often in favor of life sentences without parole, now an option in every death-penalty state but New Mexico.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, death sentences nationwide rose from 137 in 1977, peaked at 326 in 1995 and fell steadily to 110 last year.

“We’re seeing a huge drop-off,” said Mr. Bright, attributing the decline to the time and trouble of imposing death sentences, and a recent wave of exonerations after DNA tests proved wrongful conviction.

Close to 35 people have been cleared in Texas alone, including, just days ago, James L. Woodard, who spent more than 27 years in prison for a 1980 murder he did not commit.

If you would please take a few minutes to read this petition and sign it for Darlie, I would appreciate it. I hope to gather enough signatures to present this to the District Attorney here in Dallas this summer.Perhaps we will succeed in getting her DNA tested or a new trial OR BOTH.

I will have it available on the web site later this week but please circulate among your friends and family members as soon as you can.

You may also post this link on web sites.

Thank you,

Darlie Kee

http://www.fordarlieroutier.org
http://www.justicefordarlie.net

There will be protests of the first execution in Texas after the Supreme Court ruling allowing executions to resume after a de facto moratorium since Sept 25. The protests will occur prior to the first execution. Currently, the first execution is on June 3rd. If another one is scheduled before that date, then the protests will be adjusted accordingly.

Derrick Sonnier, is scheduled to be executed in Huntsville on June 3rd.

This will be the first execution in Texas since Sept 25th when Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller said, “we close at 5” and refused to accept an appeal 20 minutes late for a man later executed that night. Around 1900 people signed on to a complaint that we submitted asking the State Commission on Judicial Conduct to remove Keller for her unethical action.

Monday, June 2nd at Governor Rick Perry’s temporary home. He has moved out of the governor’s mansion while it is being renovated. The address where Perry is living is 8113 Hickory Creek Drive.

Tuesday, June 3rd at 5:30PM at the Capitol
On the steps at Congress and 11th

The Supreme Court recently decided a case allowing the use of the current method of execution by lethal injection to stand. Executions are already scheduled in a handful of states, including Texas.

Events sponsored by Campaign to End the Death Penalty and Texas Moratorium Network. If your group or organization would like to co-sponsor and/or help plan this event, let CEDP know at 494-0667 or cedpaustin@gmailcom.

The rent at Governor Perry’s temporary home is paid for with tax payer money. The state is paying almost $10,000 a month for Gov. Rick Perry and his wife, Anita, to live in this Hickory Creek Drive home for a year.

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“Democrats Against the Death Penalty Caucus” will meet at the Democratic State Convention in Austin at the Austin Convention Center in Room 6A, from 12:00-1:00pm on Friday, June 6, 2008.

This caucus was founded in 2004 and also met at the 2006 state convention.