“Recommended this week” features highlights from the past week in news about the death penalty, crime survivors, and trauma-informed responses to crime. Retain a Just Nebraska – Kirk Bloodsworth, Innocence The campaign to keep the death penalty out of Nebraska released its first TV spot this month, featuring the first man to be exonerated from death row…
On June 16, 2016, the Delaware Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Rauf v State, a case that will decide the future of Delaware’s death penalty. This case is the latest ripple effect from the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hurst v Florida ruling earlier this year, which struck down Florida’s death penalty and impacts other states,…
“Recommended this week” features highlights from the past week in news about the death penalty, crime survivors, and trauma-informed responses to crime. Letter from Jack The Reverend Dr. Jack Sullivan, Jr., Facebook A beautiful message in reaction to last weekend’s tragedy in Orlando from our friend and the Executive Director at Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation. Delaware Supreme…
In a 5-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice should have recused himself in the case of Terrance Williams. The judge in question, Justice Ronald Castille had been the District Attorney of Philadelphia and had participated in Williams’ original death penalty original death penalty trial. The following is a press…
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments in Buck v. Stephens, a death penalty case raising extraordinary issues of racial bias. Duane Buck is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a lower court’s ruling that his case did not warrant re-consideration, despite his claim that his lawyer was constitutionally ineffective for knowingly…
Group’s landmark policy agenda addresses criminal justice for the first time The National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA), a coalition of 40 prominent Latino organizations, has called for repeal of the death penalty. Collectively, the NHLA leads advocacy behind pressing civil rights and policy issues impacting the 58-million Latinos living in the U.S. The NHLA Public…
Duane Buck was sentenced to death in Texas 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 addressing racial bias in the criminal justice system, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to…
Thank you so much for your letter last week to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. Thanks to people like you, we generated over 650 letters to stop an execution tainted by racial bias and a sleeping lawyer. Georgia refused to listen. Kenneth Fults was executed last night for the 1997 killing of Cathy…
Like many people around the country, the people of Delaware – especially African Americans – have grown increasingly frustrated with the criminal justice system. Reflection, education, and dialogue have led to an urgency for action, and the state’s death penalty has come to the forefront as the highest priority. “People in Delaware, especially within the…
In its next look at the death penalty, the Supreme Court is faced with the case of Timothy Tyrone Foster, to be argued on November 2. Foster is a black man who was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury for the murder of a white woman. The jury was composed entirely of…