This morning, religious leaders from Hillsborough and Pinellas counties in Florida held a press conference to react to a report from Harvard’s Fair Punishment Project, branding the counties as “outliers” due to their overuse of the death penalty. Press conference participants released a letter to the State Attorney’s Office signed by more than 75 local religious leaders…
Harvard’s Fair Punishment Project released the second installment of a report showing the dysfunction in the use of the death penalty in the only 16 counties that continue to use it with any regularity. “Too Broken to Fix: An In-depth Look at America’s Outlier Death Penalty Counties,” looks at the 16 “outlier counties” – of 3,143 counties…
“Recommended this week” features highlights from the past week in news about the death penalty, crime survivors, and trauma-informed responses to crime. Justices, give Duane Buck a second chance, CNN.com Linda Geffin was the second chair prosecutor in Duane Buck’s case is now calling for a new sentencing in his case. She reflects on the racial bias…
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the Texas death penalty case of Duane Buck. Buck was sentenced to death after his own lawyer called an “expert” who testified that Buck was more likely to be dangerous in the future because he is black. At this crucial moment, when our nation is confronting…
Mass shootings. Black men killed by police. Shootings of police officers. These incidents seem to keep coming, highlighting deep tensions, fear, and pain across our nation. Despite these and so many other tragedies, hope abounds in communities large and small. Join EJUSA in building a movement to transform the justice system with a gift of…
Community violence prevention groups from around the country gathered yesterday for National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims. EJUSA’s longtime partner, Mothers In Charge, and its affiliates and coalition partners held press conferences to honor their loved ones and to renew their call for investment in public health approaches to violence prevention. “It is time…
“Recommended this week” features highlights from the past week in news about the death penalty, crime survivors, and trauma-informed responses to crime. Execution drop makes some think death penalty is fading away, Associated Press The end is near. Executions are on track to hit a 25-year low in 2016. Colorado Rep Don Pabon on John Fugelsang’s ‘Tell Me Everything’,…
More than 20 Duval County, Florida, religious leaders participated in an EJUSA press conference in front of the County Courthouse today. They gathered in reaction to a report from the Fair Punishment Project branding Duval County an “outlier” in its overuse of the death penalty. Clergy released a letter to the State Attorney’s Office signed…
Texas is scheduled to execute Jeff Wood on August 24, 2016, even though he never killed anyone, had no previous criminal history, and suffers from borderline intellectual functioning and mental illness. Although Wood was involved in a robbery, he didn’t plan to kill anyone and wasn’t even inside the gas station when the victim, Kris…
Race has played a disturbing role in the death penalty’s application throughout its long history in the United States. During slavery, this discrimination was explicitly written in many states’ laws. Blacks and slaves faced the death penalty in cases where the same crime committed by a white person would not even be eligible for death….