Blog of Rights
Denny
LeBoeuf
Denny LeBoeuf is the director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, which works toward the end of the death penalty by supporting repeal and reform with public education, advocacy and targeted litigation. She has been a capital defender for over 20 years, representing persons facing death at trial and in post-conviction in state and federal courts, and she teaches and consults with capital defense teams nationally. LeBoeuf also serves as the director of the ACLU’s John Adams Project, assisting in the defense of the capitally charged Guantánamo detainees. She holds a J.D. from Tulane University and a B.A. from Hunter College.
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05/10/2013
U.S. Death Penalty

Two Minutes in the Life of an Innocent Man Recently Freed from Death Row

By Denny LeBoeuf, Capital Punishment Project at 11:44am

After fifteen years on Louisiana's death row, Damon Thibodeaux was exonerated, the courts finally recognizing his innocence. He has moved to Minneapolis and is getting on with his life.

Watch the video on Damon Thibodeaux's exoneration

Watch the video here.

Damon's birthday and mine are two days apart, and for many years we would "celebrate" together while he was on death row. When I visit him this summer in Minneapolis to carry on our tradition, I expect we will have a MUCH better party.

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12/31/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

Lives Lost in 2012: Who Did We Kill?

By Denny LeBoeuf, Capital Punishment Project at 2:14pm

At the end of the year many news sources review a year’s worth of obituaries, usually the passing of the famous. Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride. Whitney Houston, Dave Brubeck. Joe Paterno, a reminder that people’s lives are complicated, and we don’t really know public people as we think we do. Rodney King. Sherman Helmsley. Tony Scott and Don Cornelius, powerful men in entertainment. Etta James, Donna Summer, and Levon Helm.

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06/08/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

Killing the Mentally Ill

By Denny LeBoeuf, Capital Punishment Project at 4:00pm

Reading today’s editorial in the New York Times led me to ask: when will our country finally stop the execution of the severely mentally ill?

The editorial rightly praises Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who on Tuesday provided at least a temporary stay of execution for death-sentenced prisoner Abdul Awkal, who was scheduled to be killed on Wednesday. 

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10/01/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

A Good Ride from Death Row

By Denny LeBoeuf, Capital Punishment Project at 5:17pm

Friday morning, September 28th, Damon Thibodeaux woke up on Death Row. By early afternoon he was a free man, walking out of Louisiana State Penitentiary after 16 years imprisonment for a crime he did not commit. He was the 141st person exonerated after being sentenced to death.

Damon was my client for 14 years. I had visited him for many years, me the lawyer, him the client. Me in a suit, him in belly chains. On Friday, Damon my friend sat unencumbered in the front seat of my car as we drove away from the prison better known as “Angola” to the world outside and usually called “the farm” by its inhabitants. When the deputy warden and the guards at the front gate called him “Mr.” Thibodeaux and shook his hand, Damon replied, “Goodbye - hope we never meet again. No offense.”

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06/29/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

Forty Years after Furman: Still "Fastened to the Obsolete"

By Denny LeBoeuf, Capital Punishment Project at 11:15am

We celebrate this day 40 years ago, when the Supreme Court, in Furman v. Georgia, declared the death penalty unconstitutional.

The Court divided in 1972 as it had never done before. Nine Justices wrote nine separate opinions, with a majority of five agreeing that the death penalty was arbitrary – "freakishly" imposed on some convicted persons while others, equally as guilty, were allowed to live. Random severity is not equal justice, they said: this offends the Eight Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Worse, they found, “if any basis can be discerned for the selection of these few to be sentenced to die, it is the constitutionally impermissible basis of race."

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01/17/2012
Guantánamo

Guantánamo and the Death Penalty: Two Terrible Ideas Come Together

By Denny LeBoeuf, Capital Punishment Project at 1:38pm

The "new" military commission has a new motto: "Fairness, Transparency, Justice." But this week is all about a system that cannot seem to provide basic rights to a defendant.

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11/07/2011

The Confederate Flag, Never Proud, No Longer Waves at Shreveport Courthouse

By Denny LeBoeuf, Capital Punishment Project at 4:43pm

The confederate flag, deliberately adopted as a symbol of white race domination and control, no longer flies on the steps of the Shreveport, Louisiana courthouse. Last week, Caddo Parish commissioners voted 11-1 to take it down, after litigation charging racial bias in several death penalty cases argued under the flag got the attention of the Louisiana Supreme Court and the national media.

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11/09/2011
Prosecutorial Misconduct

Time to Confess Error on the Death Penalty

By Denny LeBoeuf, Capital Punishment Project at 4:16pm

Yesterday at the Supreme Court, a New Orleans prosecutor defended the conviction of a man despite the admitted failure of her office to turn over evidence they were required to provide to his defense team. This fraudulently obtained conviction was then used to help send Juan Smith to death row. The prosecutorial misconduct was so severe — and the shameful history of New Orleans prosecutors so blatant — that Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan asked the hapless prosecutor: “Did your office ever consider just confessing error in this case?”

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11/16/2011
Racial Justice Act

Discrimination by the Numbers

By Denny LeBoeuf, Capital Punishment Project at 5:26pm

North Carolina’s district attorneys have seen the promise of that state’s Racial Justice Act (RJA) up close, and they don’t want it to get any closer. This week they sent a letter to state legislators asking them to scuttle the RJA fast.

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09/23/2008

The Man Who Wasn't There

By Denny LeBoeuf, Capital Punishment Project at 5:47pm

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

Monday's hearing in the Guantánamo Military Commission prosecution of the alleged 9/11 plotters was expected to address the now-familiar allegations of improper command influence by Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann, who has already been excluded from three other commission trials for politicizing his legal advice in favor of the prosecution. But if there's one thing we've learned to expect about these military commissions, it's that nothing goes according to plan. In that regard, Monday didn't disappoint.

At 9 a.m., when proceedings were scheduled to begin, one seat was noticeably empty: Ramzi bin al-Shibh's. The other four so-called "High-Value Detainees" were there, as were their military and civilian lawyers and advisors, the prosecutors, the many guards, and the unnamed and never-identified civilian contractors who control security. But bin al-Shibh was nowhere in sight.

For the next 90 minutes, the defendants spoke to their "co-counsel" (three of the detainees are representing themselves) and to each other. Then a recess was announced. There was no explanation.

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