American Civil Liberties Union

Recently, Dr. James Watson filed an amicus brief opposing gene patents in our lawsuit challenging the patents on two human genes associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. Dr. Watson, along with Francis Crick, identified DNA’s ability to create life through its double helical structure and its information-coding sequences in 1953. His brief explains why, from the perspective of a scientist whose work laid the foundation for all genetic research, gene patenting is “lunacy.”

Perhaps because men make up the overwhelming portion of the death row population in the United States, we often don't think of the 61 women sentenced to death, or the 12 women who have been executed in the modern death penalty era which commenced in 1976.

Teresa Lewis, whom Virginia executed in September of last year, was the last woman executed in the United States. Lewis had been convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of her husband and stepson, allegedly to collect insurance money. Prosecutors claimed that Lewis was the mastermind of the murders, which were committed by two men, Matthew Shallenberger and Rodney Fuller. But Lewis, with an IQ in the mentally retarded range, was no mastermind. Shallenberger, Lewis's lover, took advantage of her gender and her mental limitations in convincing her to go along with his plot.

The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) recently released its 2012 Year End Report, which contained some important news: the number of death sentences in the U.S. remained very close to its 2011 historic low. The 78 death sentences handed down in 2012 represented a 75 percent decline since 1996.  In addition, several states that have historically been high users of the death penalty had no new death sentences or executions, including North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.