One year ago, the ACLU's Amy Fettig stood before the United Nations Human Rights Council to condemn the use of solitary confinement in the United States. In a written statement also submitted to the Council last year, the ACLU expressed serious concern over the imposition of the death penalty across the nation. Sadly, we find ourselves this year once again at the same body, imploring the U.S. to live up to its human rights obligations with regard to these practices.
By Michael Risher, Staff Attorney, ACLU of Northern California at 2:22pm
Last week the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said it would rehear the ACLU of Northern California's lawsuit challenging a California law that mandates that DNA is collected from anyone arrested on suspicion of a felony.
By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 11:10am
The inauguration of Barack Obama, one day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, has prompted a healthy discussion in the nation about racial and socioeconomic inequality.
As part of that discussion it is important to point out that, just like the divisions in the Jim Crow south, the death penalty continues to divide us by race and socioeconomic status.
In 1976, when the Supreme Court approved the modern death penalty statutes that were supposed to ensure that death sentences were no longer arbitrary and discriminatory, the Court stated that "capital punishment is an expression of society's moral outrage at particularly offensive conduct . . ."
By Tanya Greene, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 11:38am
Hooray for Maryland! Expressing concerns about the risk of deadly error, the exorbitant and ever-increasing cost, racial bias and the unending torment of murder victims' family members, today Maryland Governor, Martin O'Malley, signed into law repeal of that state's death penalty. We applaud the legislature and the Governor on their decision to end state-sponsored homicide in Maryland. We are a better nation for it.
Part of a noticeable trend – as Dr. King might say, the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice -- Maryland is the sixth state in six years to repeal the death penalty, joining New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, Illinois and Connecticut.
By Tanya Greene, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 10:58am
The state of Georgia has blood on its hands.
Last night, Georgia strapped down an innocent human being and forced lethal poison into his veins until he died. In your name; in my name, unashamed and unhesitating.
This case had most of the worst of what we have come to fear from our criminal justice system — racism, lying witnesses, shoddy police work and innocence ignored.
By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 10:06am
With an opinion yesterday from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, ACLU client Max Soffar moves a step closer to an unjust execution. And, little more than one year after the execution of Troy Davis, our system moves closer to another miscarriage of justice.
Soffar is an innocent man on Texas’s death row, who falsely confessed to crimes he didn’t commit. He’s been there most of the last 32 years after being convicted of killing three people in a 1980 Houston bowling alley robbery. His conviction was based entirely on false words from his own mouth.
As states begin to realize that they can reduce their prison populations safely, the pace of reform has begun to pick up a bit this year. State legislative sessions are coming to a close, which makes it a good time to review the actions lawmakers have taken to reduce their unsustainable prison populations in 2012. Here are the some of the legislative reform highlights:
Alabama
Faced with a system of overcrowded prisons and fearing the same sort of court order that forced California to reform its prison system, Alabama took an indirect route toward depopulating its prisons. The state passed SB 386 inMay, which will allow the Alabama Sentencing Commission to set sentencing guidelines for nonviolent crimes that judges would generally have to follow. Under the new law, the Commission can make sentencing changes for nonviolent crimes, which will take effect unless the legislature takes action to reject any such the changes. The Sentencing Commission, which is insulated from the electoral pressure to reject proposals to soften criminal sentences, may now be poised to take action to reduce prison sentences for nonviolent offenses.
