Recent Death Penalty News
SUREME COURT REJECTS APPEAL BY TROY
ANTHONY DAVIS
SCOTUS Blog, March 28, 2011
The Supreme Court, without a noted dissent, on Monday cleared the way
for the state of Georgia to carry out the execution of Troy Anthony
Davis of Savannah, rejecting five different ways that Davis’ lawyers
had sought to press his claim that he did not commit a 1989 murder of
an off-duty policeman.
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Text
SECOND THOUGHTS OF A HANGING JUDGE
Hon. Donald McCartin, LA Times, March 25, 2011
I presided over 10 murder cases in which I sentenced the
convicted men to die. As a result, I became known as "the hanging judge
of Orange County," an appellation that, I will confess, I accepted with
some pride.
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THE PENALTY OF DEATH AND A
CONSISTENT ETHIC OF LIFE
Rev. Salvatore J. Cordileone, March 24, 2011
At an event sponsored by California People of Faith Bishop Cordileone
of Oakland spoke at Queen of Apostles Church in San Jose on a
Consistent Ethic of Life, speaking of the "seamless garment"
philosophy, which holds that such
issues as abortion, capital punishment, militarism, euthanasia, social
justice, and economic injustice all demand a consistent application of
moral principles that value the sacredness of human life.
Full Text
of the Bishop's Speech
GOV. PAT QUINN SIGNS S.B. 3539 INTO
LAW, ABOLISHES DEATH PENALTY IN ILLINOIS
March 9, 2011
The governor's action makes Illinois the 16th state to abolish the
death penalty.
Statement
from Pat Quinn
TEXAS, THE DEATH PENALTY AND THE WILL OF GOD By
United Methodist pastor Matt Idom, The Huffington Post.
5/24/10
…it is the "Christian" in me, so maybe you will forgive me my opinion,
but I do not believe that capital punishment belongs in our world. I
believe we are all measured not by mitigating circumstances but by
grace.
Complete article
DEATH PENALTY: POST-GENOCIDE COUNTRIES BAN EXECUTIONS TO
'END REVENGE', Interpress Service, February 25, 2010
More than 1,000 activists and experts attending this
week's Fourth World Congress Against the Death Penalty in this Swiss
city are building a network of cooperation to support local
organisations campaigning for human rights in countries that retain
capital punishment…
Full
text
CALIFORNIA'S DEATH PENALTY NEEDS SUBSTANTIAL REFORMS, San Jose Mercury News,
January 7, 2010
California corrections officials proposed new lethal
injection procedures designed to allow executions to resume after a
four-year moratorium. The state would be better off abolishing the
death penalty...
Full text
DEATH ROW FOES NOW FIGHT THE COST OF EXECUTIONS
The state could save up to $1 billion over the next five years, they
say, by commuting all 682 death row inmates' sentences to life without
the possibility of parole. By Carol J. Williams, LA Times,
June 29, 2009
Nearly 3 1/2 years into a court-ordered suspension of executions,
opponents have embraced a new argument: that Californians can't afford
to carry out the death penalty in a constitutional manner.
They contend that by commuting all 682 death row inmates' sentences
to life without the possibility of parole, the state could save up to
$1 billion over the next five years -- a view expected to be offered,
and challenged, during a public hearing today in Sacramento on proposed
changes to the lethal injection procedures.
Full text
Opinion: CALIFORNIA CAN'T AFFORD THE DEATH PENALTY
Eliminating capital punishment, which is rarely carried out anyhow,
would save the state $125 million a year, from LA Times, June 10, 2009
There are many reasons why people object to the death penalty.
Opponents point to the ever-present risk of wrongful conviction. They
note that there's bias against people of color and low-income
defendants, as well as geographic disproportionality in its
administration. And there's the fact that most other civilized
societies around the world have concluded that it should be abolished.
Full text
STATE OPENS COMMENT PERIOD ON LETHAL INJECTION PROCEDURES
Two-month period will be used to gather views on the execution process
as a step toward resuming the death penalty, by Carol J. Williams, LA
Times, May 2, 2009
State officials launched a two-month forum Friday for public comment on
revised lethal injection procedures in a step toward resuming
executions as early as next year.
But the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation warned
in posting the new
protocols that it will weigh comments only on the execution
process, not on the legality or morality of the death penalty. (pdf)
Full article
QUESTIONS SURROUND PLAN TO SELL SAN
QUENTIN PRISON, By Don Thompson, San Jose Mercury News,
May 14, 2009
SACRAMENTO—Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to sell California's
oldest and best known prison comes after the state has spent millions
of dollars to upgrade it and with no firm alternative for housing its
inmates. The governor said the state could sell San Quentin State
Prison and other state-owned properties to raise between $600 million
and $1 billion, using the proceeds to help close the state's budget
deficit...
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text
CAN CALIFORNIANS AFFORD TO KEEP THE DEATH PENALTY? By
Elisabeth Semel, special to the Sacramento Bee
It took more than three years of litigation, which the state lost
repeatedly, before the attorney general's office conceded that the
execution protocol must be open to public scrutiny.
Indeed, throughout the legal challenges to California's method of
lethal injection, the governor, the attorney general and the
Corrections Department unswervingly opposed any disclosures. Even as
the process of public notice and comment on the state's
lethal-injection protocol begins, a complicated tangle of legal
proceedings remains before the state can resume executions.
Full text
DIVIDED APPEALS COURT UPHOLDS DEATH SENTENCE, By Bob
Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle, May 13, 2009
Lawyers for a Southern California man convicted of murdering four
people after escaping from prison said Tuesday they would take his case
to the U.S. Supreme Court after a bitterly divided federal appeals
court upheld his death sentence, with one dissenter warning that the
state "may be about to execute an innocent man."
Full text
DYSFUNCTIONAL DEATH PENALTY RACKS UP 28-year, $5-MILLION TAB,
By Maura Dolan, LA Times, May 17, 2009
And that's just for one case. Michael Ray Burgener's death sentence in
the murder of a 7-Eleven clerk has been overturned multiple times, and
lawyers say his appeals could span another 15 years.
Reporting from San Francisco -- When Chief Justice Ronald M. George
described California's death penalty as "dysfunctional," he might have
had in mind the curious case of Michael Ray Burgener. Burgener,
sentenced to death for murder in 1981, has yet to complete his
automatic appeal before the San Francisco-based California Supreme
Court. His case has ping-ponged from trial courts to appeals courts
over 28 years, and he still does not know whether he will be sentenced
to die from lethal injection or spend the rest of his life in prison.
Complete article
AMERICA, RELIGIOUS VALUES AND THE DEATH PENALTY; Or,
If it Was Good Enough for Jesus and Socrates...by
Louis A. Ruprecht, Religion Dispatches, May 18, 2009
The United States is still using the logic of vengeance in enforcing
the death penalty, and it is the only Western country within its
primary coalitions to do so. When did it start? How can it end? What is
wrong with us?
Complete article