By Tanya Greene, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 5:25pm
"If a lawyer stole $5 from a client, he would probably be prosecuted and might even go to jail — but that prosecutor stole 18 years of my life and what happened to him? Nothing."
This from John Thompson last night in New York, as he kicked off a multi-state speaking series on prosecutorial misconduct in the criminal justice system. You may remember Thompson as one of the men Harry Connick, Sr.’s Orleans Parish (Louisiana) District Attorney’s Office sent to death row by hiding evidence that would have proven his innocence. You may also remember that Thompson was released after 18 years in prison, 14 of them on death row awaiting his execution, that he sued for the damage done to his life, and that a jury awarded him $14 million. And you may recall that last year the United States Supreme Court denied him that reward, refusing to find the prosecutor’s office that broke the rules to send Thompson to death row liable for monetary damages for his stolen life.
By Denny LeBoeuf, Capital Punishment Project at 6:18pm
There’s a simple assumption at the heart of North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act (RJA), which allows death row inmates to present statistical evidence to support the contention that race discrimination played a part in their case and possibly have their death sentence converted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. That assumption is this: whether or not a convicted murderer gets the death penalty should be based on his crime and his character, and not on his race.
Laverne Keys, a longtime North Carolinian who wished to do her civic duty by serving on a jury, believes she was excluded from service because she is black. “It made me feel like I was back in 1960, that racism is still very much alive. It makes you wonder whether all these people are being given a fair trial or given a fair consequence so far as the death penalty,” she says in a new video out today from the ACLU.
By Denny LeBoeuf, Capital Punishment Project at 11:58am
Unless Edwin Hart Turner gets clemency from the governor or a last-minute stay, he will be executed on February 8 by the state of Mississippi.
Turner murdered two men in botched hold-ups. His attorneys do not claim that he is innocent of their murders, and no one can diminish the tragic loss to two families. But executing Turner should be off the table: he is severely mentally ill, and it violates the Constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and international human rights law to execute the mentally ill. Virtually every mainstream organization representing mental health experts and families of the mentally ill says so, and the American Bar Association (which does not take a position on the death penalty itself) agrees.
By Denny LeBoeuf, Capital Punishment Project at 5:19pm
The death penalty is supposed to be for the worst of the worst. The system of capital punishment in the United States has always assumed it was so, from its beginnings. Not all crimes may be punished with death, and not all trials for death-eligible crimes result in a death sentence. Therefore, the law must be set up to make rational distinctions, in order to guide prosecutors and juries to winnow out “the worst of the worst” as the recipients of the death penalty.
By Anna Arceneaux, Staff Attorney, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 5:02pm
As 2011 comes to end, we’re taking a look back at the year in criminal justice. Over the next few days, we’ll run a series of blog posts on the developments, good and bad, that have shaped our justice system – from overincarceration and sentencing policy to the treatment of prisoners and capital punishment. Read the series here.
By Avinash Samarth, ACLU National Security Project at 4:58pm
The political gulf between American policy and European policy on capital punishment widened further today as the European Commission released its decision to tighten export controls for some key materials used in the execution or cruel treatment of prisoners. The new policy applies expressly to the exportation of such goods by European countries to nations that still engage in capital punishment or torture.
North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue today courageously vetoed a bill to repeal that state’s Racial Justice Act (RJA), an historic 2009 state law enacted to ensure that death sentences handed down in the state are not the result of racial bias in the trial and jury selection process.
Last month the North Carolina legislature voted to repeal RJA, which allows death row inmates to present statistics showing that race was a factor at the time of their trial. If an inmate was able to show that, his or her death sentence would be converted to life in prison without parole.
On August 10, 2009, the North Carolina Legislature passed a historic piece of civil rights legislation, the North Carolina Racial Justice Act (RJA), which was intended to reform racial discrimination in that state’s death penalty cases. This week, the North Carolina Legislature repealed the very same legislation.
