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Amnesty International Death Penalty Blog

From Amnesty International

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Last Entry: November 05, 2008 at 15:31:17

You said it, now follow through

Posted on March 19, 2008
Troy Davis presented the Supreme Court of Georgia with new evidence - recantations from nearly every witness that testified against him at trial, plus multiple affidavits claiming that another (one of the two remaining witnesses) was the actual murderer...

Woman under stoning sentence in Iran is released

Posted on March 18, 2008
An update to Urgent Action 179/07 ... Mokarrameh Ebrahimi was released from Choubin prison in Qazvin province, northwestern Iran, on 17 March, along with her youngest child, a son named Ali, who was living in prison with her. Mokarrameh Ebrahimi had been imprisoned for 11 years...

Troy Davis Appeal Denied

Posted on March 17, 2008
Many of you who read this blog have been following the case of Troy Davis - on death row in Georgia for over 16 years despite strong evidence that he may be innocent. Troy came within 24 hours of execution last July before receiving a temporary stay of execution...

The debate keeps going

Posted on March 07, 2008
For two years in a row, Maryland has been the set of a controversial debate in which opponents are trying to get Maryland's death penalty overturned in the legislature. Yesterday, Thursday March 6, 2008, Maryland's Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee heard two bills related to the death penalty...

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Taking justice into your own hands

Posted on March 05, 2008
Today I received an unexpected email but one of the most gratifying emails I have received in a long time. Martina Davis-Correia, sister of Georgia Death Row Inmate Troy Anthony Davis, wrote a very compelling letter to thank everyone for the international support given to her brother...

Our second life

Posted on February 26, 2008
We always hoped that in 2000 we would live like the Jetsons and while in 2008, we are still not even close to the having a car that packs itself into a bag, we have numerous new technologies and new media. The internet, film, video games and many other innovative media have given us the opportunity to express ourselves and the topics that matter, in a more creative and interesting way...

If it does not work, why expand it?

Posted on February 22, 2008
Thankfully the New Hampshire Senate recognized that expanding the death penalty would not solve the criminal problems they are suffering. The bill sponsored by Senator Joe Kenny, R-Wakefield, wanted to impose the death penalty on those guilty of killing more than one person at a time...

Not living the dream

Posted on February 20, 2008
"Imagine a white man going on trial for the murder of a black man and receiving the death penalty... You know you can't." said Sister Helen Prejean past Monday at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center. "Eighty percent of the real practitioners of the death penalty are in the 10 Southern states that practiced slavery the longest - where white people are threatened by people of color," Prejean...

PUNISH CRUELTY WITHOUT PRACTICING IT

Posted on February 08, 2008
We hear a lot from folks who argue that we shouldn't worry about inflicting pain on the condemned during an execution, because of the pain they inflicted on their victims. Or that the pain of the execution should match, or even exceed, the pain suffered by the victims in their last moments...

Mardi gras colors

Posted on February 05, 2008
Let's dress ourselves with the Mardi gras colors. The traditional colors of this Carnival are purple, green and gold. Even if you do not like this holiday or consider it somewhat odd, I am asking you to reflect back to its origins and act based on those original meanings...

Does Alabama want to be the new Texas?

Posted on January 31, 2008
highest rate of death sentencing in the county ... no right to counsel for appeal ... stay of execution lifted despite a halt to executions nationwide ... You may expect to hear such things coming out of Texas, the state that far exceeds every other in executions - where Michael Richard was executed on September 25th, 2007 because a judge didn't want to keep her office open an extra 30...

Murder victims' families against Death Penalty

Posted on January 30, 2008
"You have not lost a family member, right? You would think very differently about the death penalty after someone close to you is killed", a friend of mine told me. Although she has not lost anyone to murder, she is one of those persons who believe that the death penalty is the right punishment for atrocious murder crimes and that it brings relief to the murder victims' families...

Atonement

Posted on January 18, 2008
Last night, the NBC show ER featured a retired prison doctor who had performed lethal injections and was now racked with guilt. This doctor, Dr. Truman, was also dying of cancer and was spending his remaining time trying to make amends to the families of the men he had helped execute...

Stoning in Iran

Posted on January 17, 2008
Women continue to bear the brunt of Iran's draconian penal system and are subject to more punishments by stoning. Eleven people-nine of them women-are currently waiting to be stoned to death on charges of adultery. In a 32-page reported entitled, Iran: death by stoning a grotesque and unacceptable penalty, Amnesty International documents a cruel practice that is often imposed after grossly unfair...

Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Lethal Injection

Posted on January 07, 2008
Oral arguments in the case of Baze v. Rees, on the constitutionality of Kentucky's lethal injection protocol, took place this morning at the U.S. Supreme Court. I sat in the courtroom and listened to both sides make their case, as the nine Supreme Court Justices asked continuous questions and as those watching, like myself, listened silently...

Secret Executions in Nigeria

Posted on December 18, 2007
"Punishment only comes after exhaustive legal and judicial processes, including recourse to the supreme court of the land... It is thus on record that we have not carried out any capital punishment in recent years in Nigeria." This statement was made last month, on November 15, 2007, by a Nigerian government representative at the United Nations...

Aw-Right NEW JERSEY!!!!

Posted on December 13, 2007
We are so happy to say that the New Jersey Legislative Assembly just passed the abolition bill (with a 44-36 majority). Thanks to everyone who made this a reality! Here is what Amnesty International USA's executive Director Larry Cox had to say: Amnesty International USA applauds the New Jersey Assembly for voting to abolish the death penalty...

126 exonerees

Posted on December 12, 2007
During the period of time between 1995 and 2007, I worked in one industry, went back to school and completed one and 7/8ths degrees in another industry. I have moved over ten times and traveled a tiny portion of the world. People have married, had kids and so on...

On cruel and unusual punishment

Posted on December 07, 2007
I wanted to comment briefly on one of the questions raised during the online chat today: Question Submitted by Robbie: Thank you for answering my first question. I have a follow up, if the person that is being executed has been administered anesthesia properly with the first injection, do lethal injection still constitute "cruel and unusual" punishment if he or she...

Happy (?) 25th Anniversary, Lethal Injection (but your time has come...)

Posted on December 06, 2007
Tomorrow, December 7, 2007, is the 25th anniversary of the first lethal injection in the USA. Charles "Charlie" Brooks Jr. of Fort Worth, Texas was the first man (and potentially the first innocent man killed by lethal injection, see here ) injected with the three drug-cocktail which would spread faster than any infectious disease to become the country's preferred method of state-killing...

Exonerated, After 15 Years on Death Row

Posted on December 06, 2007
Michael Lee McCormick was acquitted yesterday, December 5th, by a Tennessee jury of the 1985 murder of Donna Jean Nichols. He spent over 15 years on Tennessee's death row for this murder, which he did not commit. In his first trial, McCormick was convicted based on hair evidence from Nichols' car and a secretly recorded confession to an undercover cop...

NJ Senate budget committee approves death penalty abolition!

Posted on December 03, 2007
It's been over 40 years since Iowa and West Virginia repealed their capital punishment statutes in 1965. Since that time the death penalty has been invalidated, and reinstated; lethal injection has taken over as the main method of execution; and 124 people have been found innocent and released from death row...

To Test DNA, or not to test, why is this even a question?

Posted on November 29, 2007
Death Penalty Opposer: ...there is always a chance that an innocence person may be executed. Over 120 people have been exonerated from death row since reinstatement in the USA and there are many cases where there is significant evidence that people who have been executed were actually innocent (see here for at least nine examples)...

On Deterrence

Posted on November 26, 2007
The controversy regarding the deterrent effect of capital punishment has gained momentum these days... It seems to have begun this time around with the publication of Adler and Summer's November 2, 2007 commentary in the Wall Street Journal regarding their own findings...

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