- Moratorium bills passed the Nevada Senate and the Maryland House of Delegates. A moratorium amendment lost by only 3 votes in the Connecticut House, while Texas bills passed committees in both legislative houses.
- Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Missouri, and North Carolina enacted legislation banning the execution of the mentally retarded.
- 17 states improved access to post-conviction DNA testing.
- Investigative reports examining fairness in death sentencing ran in the Houston Chronicle, the Tennessean, and the Seattle Post-Intellegencer.
- Oklahoma City police chemist Joyce Gilchrist was fired after an F.B.I. report revealed that her work went “beyond the acceptable limits of forensic science.”
- The Council of Europe threatened to revoke the United States’ Observer Status if we did not halt executions immediately.
- Chile, Yugoslavia, and the Ukraine joined the majority of world nations by eliminating executions.
- Five wrongly convicted death row prisoners were exonerated, bringing the total to 98 since 1973.
- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor publicly acknowledged, “the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed.”
Our Impact
