U.S. Death Penalty

05/04/2012
Overincarceration

Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration: Weekly Highlights

By Alex Stamm, ACLU Center for Justice at 2:34pm

Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we’ve spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.

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06/05/2009
Reggie Clemons

Race, Reasonable Doubt and Reggie Clemons

By Christopher Hill, Capital Punishment Project at 3:26pm

The ACLU often provides examples of the problems with the capital punishment system in the United States. Reggie Clemons is scheduled for execution on June 17, 2009. Clemons, a black man, was convicted of the murder of two young white women in St. Louis in 1991. Clemons and two other black men were sentenced to death while a fourth person, a young white man was offered a plea deal and is out on parole. That is not the only race issue in the case. The original suspect, a white man and the cousin of the women, confessed to the crime after failing a lie detector test and changing his story several times. Clemons, the original suspect and another defendant all complained that the police beat them into confessions.

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05/15/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

New Proof of an Old Fear: Execution of the Innocent

By Cassandra Stubbs, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 4:58pm

The State of Texas, long the nation's leader in executions, has now earned the dubious title of the state most likely to execute the innocent. In 2004, Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham, despite compelling evidence that he was actually innocent of the arson which caused the death of his three small children. Now, newly assembled evidence suggests that Carlos DeLuna, executed by Texas in 1989, was also innocent. A team of researchers from Columbia Law School today released a new report about DeLuna's case, Los Tocayos Carlos: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Conviction. The full report, along with video clips and interviews about the case, are available at the Columbia Human Rights Law Review's website.

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12/17/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

Velez Hearing Day 4: Plight of Victim’s Family Shows That Death Penalty is the Wrong Priority

By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 10:44am

Day 4 of the Manuel Velez innocence hearing on Friday in Brownsville, Texas...

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06/14/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

Spared From a Death Sentence Based On Falsehoods

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 5:52pm

An almost-certainly innocent man was spared from death at the hands of the state of Texas yesterday when the highest criminal court in Texas threw out the death sentence of ACLU client Manuel Velez, ruling it was based on the false testimony of a state expert.

Velez was awaiting execution after the state’s expert witness falsely told the sentencing jury that, if sentenced to life without parole instead of death, Velez would be permitted lenient prison conditions and thereby pose a greater threat of danger to the public.
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04/25/2012
Connecticut

CT Ends Death Penalty! One Big Step for a Small State; One Giant Step for our Society

By Tanya Greene, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 2:36pm

Connecticut has finally wiped its hands of that messy and sorrowful task of killing its own citizens. Today, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed legislation to repeal the death penalty that was passed by the state legislature earlier this month.

After a series of starts, stops, hurry up and wait, promises, threats, votes and vetoes over recent years, Connecticut stepped surely onto the abolition train and prospectively repealed the death penalty once and for all. The 11 men on death row before the bill's passage will remain there and continue to face execution, but thankfully no one else will. We applaud the brave legislators who heard the pleas of scores of Connecticut murder victim families who called for repeal and nonviolent healing, of law enforcement officials who recognize the death penalty is the least effective tool against violence, of conservatives and progressives alike who have concern about its discriminatory use and huge expense, and of religious leaders of all faiths who insist state-sponsored murder cannot be justified.

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03/11/2010
Reggie Clemons

Key Evidence Found in Reggie Clemons Case

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 5:39pm

Last year, Chris Hill, formerly of our Capital Punishment Project, blogged about the case of Reggie Clemons. Chris called the case a horrifying confluence of "police brutality, prosecutorial misconduct, witnesses with motivations to give false testimony, dreadful defense lawyering and blatant racism." But Clemons, one of four men convicted of murder in the 1991 deaths of two sisters, and who has been on Missouri's death row for 19 years, may have caught a break.

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06/17/2009
Reggie Clemons

Reggie Clemons and the Parade of Horribles

By Christopher Hill, Capital Punishment Project at 4:37pm

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

As soon as the St. Louis police officers knocked on the door of the home of Vera Thomas in April 1991, a parade of horribles began which culminated with her son, Reggie Clemons, being convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The case is infected by police brutality, prosecutorial misconduct, witnesses with motivations to give false testimony, dreadful defense lawyering and blatant racism. All of this led to no justice for Reggie Clemons.

Reggie Clemons was destined to die as soon as he walked into the police station for questioning. The police asked him about the deaths of Julie and Robin Kerry, two young white women who fell to their deaths from the Chain of Rocks Bridge in Missouri. Clemons and three people he was with that night were suspected of robbing, raping and murdering the Kerry sisters and forcing their cousin, Tom Cummins, to jump off the bridge.

At the police station, Clemons was beaten until he cried. When the police began to tape the confession, Clemons invoked his right to an attorney and said that the police had beaten him. When a second tape was made, Clemons confessed to rape because the police were preparing to beat him again. He did not confess to murder.

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12/18/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

Velez Hearing Wraps Up With Summations, Offers Lessons on Role of Counsel

By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 12:02pm

Yesterday was the final day of the hearing in Brownsville, Texas, for ACLU client and former death-row prisoner Manuel Velez.  Judge Elia Cornejo Lopez heard summations, requested the parties to prepare proposed findings for her consideration, and announced that a decision would come at a later date.

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09/25/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

Child Predators, Cheating Prosecutors and Terry Williams: How Pennsylvania Is Poised to Execute a Victim of Horrific Sexual Violence Despite the State’s Own Bad Acts

By Tanya Greene, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 12:52pm

Here we go again – but, wait, this is Pennsylvania, not Texas or Florida, which have been known to execute individuals despite evidence supporting innocence and/or horrifying trauma histories and major mental health and intellectual deficits.  For the first time in more than a decade, Pennsylvania is planning an execution. Terry Williams is the first Pennsylvania death row prisoner scheduled to be involuntarily executed in 50 years in that northern state –  it turns out it’s not just the South that denies people’s rights and kills them anyway. 

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4/5/2013
Manuel Velez v. The State of Texas

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12/17/2012
North Carolina v. Tilmon Golphin, Christina Walters, and Quintel Augustine

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12/17/2012
Petitions Filed Under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act

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10/1/2012
Damon Thibodeaux: A Case of False Confession

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7/26/2012
Ryan v. Gonzales and Tibbals v. Carter
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