“Recommended this week” features highlights from the past week in news about the death penalty, crime survivors, and trauma-informed responses to crime. Evangelical Leaders Call for Halt to Texas Execution Demand New Sentencing Hearing for Jeff Wood, The Gospel Herald Evangelical Leaders Call for Halt to Texas Execution, Evangelicals for Social Action Evangelicals urge halt to Texas execution, Baptist News Global…
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…
Almost 50 Evangelical leaders from Texas and around the country called upon state officials to stop the execution of Jeff Wood. In a letter released Monday, the religious leaders urged Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Board of Paroles and Pardons to grant Wood a new sentencing hearing, saying he “never should have been sentenced…
“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…
“Recommended this week” features highlights from the past week in news about the death penalty, crime survivors, and trauma-informed responses to crime. Supreme Court To Hear Cases Challenging Two Texas Death Sentences, Buzzfeed The high court agrees to hear the death penalty cases of Duane Buck and Bobby James Moore. After nearly 40 years, murder charges dropped against…
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…
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…
In a hearing last week in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, lawyers for Texas death row inmate Scott Panetti argued that his severe mental illness renders him without the mentally competency to be executed. They asked the court to send the case back to a lower federal court to…
While Texas may seem like an outlier in the national trend away from the death penalty, even the Lone Star State is turning away from the antiquated, broken system. For the first time in more than 20 years, no jury in the previous 6-month period has imposed the death penalty. Read the full story in…
We will be updating our Twitter feed and this post with more information as it comes in. *Update – 12/4/2014, 1:56pm ET* Here is the statement from Panetti’s attorneys at the Texas Defender Service. It includes a thorough background on the case. *Update – 12/4/2014, 12:01pm ET* The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has issued…