By Denny LeBoeuf, Capital Punishment Project at 11:44am
After fifteen years on Louisiana's death row, Damon Thibodeaux was exonerated, the courts finally recognizing his innocence. He has moved to Minneapolis and is getting on with his life.
Damon's birthday and mine are two days apart, and for many years we would "celebrate" together while he was on death row. When I visit him this summer in Minneapolis to carry on our tradition, I expect we will have a MUCH better party.
By Anthony Graves, who spent years in solitary confinement on Texas’ death row before being proven innocent in 2010. Yesterday he testified about the experience at a Senate subcommittee hearing on solitary confinement. His website is www.anthonybelieves.com.
On November 1, 1994, I heard the gavel fall and the judge announce, “Anthony Graves, I hereby sentence you to death by lethal injection.” The jury had already convicted me of murdering six people and burning down their house down to cover up the crime. I was completely innocent: they had the wrong guy. I was scared of dying for a crime I did not commit, but I believed in my innocence and hoped someone, somewhere would make it right.
An international human rights body is set to question the United States on its obligations under a key human rights treaty. The U.N. Human Rights Committee, an independent body of experts tasked with monitoring compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), this week released its list of issues, which will serve as the basis for its upcoming review of U.S. compliance with the treaty. The U.S. ratified the ICCPR in 1992 and is obligated to submit to periodic reviews of its treaty implementation efforts.
By Katie Haas, ACLU Human Rights Program at 10:16am
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.
By Anna Arceneaux, Staff Attorney, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 5:13pm
One less person faces possible death at the hands of Alabama’s arbitrary capital punishment system, after the State agreed to stop seeking the death penalty for ACLU client LaSamuel Gamble late last week. Gamble, who has been on death row for nearly 16 years, was resentenced to life in prison without parole.
Gamble was a mere 18 years old when he accompanied his 16-year old friend Marcus Presley on a robbery of a pawn shop just outside of Birmingham. During the robbery, Presley shot and killed the two employees at the store. Both Gamble and Presley received death sentences for the crime, but Presley’s sentence was converted to life when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the death penalty could not be imposed on defendants who were under 18 at the time of the crime.
