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.
In 2009, North Carolina made history by becoming the first state to pass a law that addressed the systemic problems of racial discrimination in jury selection in capital cases. In the three years since the Racial Justice Act (RJA) was enacted, this law has uncovered systemic discrimination. In four cases, North Carolina death row inmates presented sweeping evidence that racial discrimination in jury selection tainted their trials, and had their death sentences converted to life without parole under the law.
By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 2:47pm
In Day 3 of the Velez hearing in Brownsville, Texas, I want to take a moment to explain the legal context – the rule of constitutional law – that will entitle Manuel Velez to relief if the judge, the Hon. Elia Cornejo Lopez, credits the facts presented.
The legal journey starts 50 years back with the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Gideon v. Wainwright. There, the court held that the Constitution entitles poor people facing possible imprisonment counsel appointed at the state’s expense. In later decisions, the court clarified that a poor person’s right to appointed counsel is a right to effective counsel.
By Anna Arceneaux, Staff Attorney, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 3:44pm
In June 1993, Damien Echols, 18, Jason Baldwin, 16, and Jessie Misskelley, 17, who would come to be known as the “West Memphis Three,” were wrongfully arrested for the murders of three young boys in the small Arkansas town of West Memphis, just across the Tennessee border.
You may be familiar with HBO’s Paradise Lost three-part series on the case, which helped expose the gross injustices that led to the convictions against these three young men – and a death sentence against Damien – for crimes they did not commit. Now, a new, powerful documentary,West of Memphis, tells the story from the defense team’s perspective as the prosecution’s case against the three teenagers unravels.
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.”
By Kara Dansky, Senior Counsel, ACLU Center for Justice at 12:02pm
According to a recent New York Times article, prosecutors and debt collectors are working together to threaten bad check writers with jail, even when no crime has been committed.
Here’s how it works. Someone writes a check to a merchant such as Wal-Mart (whether the person intends to defraud the merchant is irrelevant). The check bounces. The person then receives a letter signed by the local district attorney, on official letterhead, stating that the person can be sent to jail unless he or she agrees to pay the amount of the check, plus fees, plus the cost of a “financial accountability” class. The person is not informed that the letter is actually sent by a debt collection company or that no one at the district attorney’s office has reviewed the case. If the person agrees to take the class, the class participation fee is split between the debt collection company and the district attorney’s office.
This week, rather than acknowledge a growing mountain of evidence of racial bias in death penalty proceedings, especially in the selection of capital juries, the North Carolina House of Representatives chose to essentially gut the Racial Justice Act (RJA). Senate Bill 416, the so-called “Amend Death Penalty Procedures” makes it so that a judge may not make a finding of racial bias in the system based on statistical proof – as North Carolina Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks did just a few months ago in the first-ever ruling under the RJA.
