Criminal Law

Demonstration before Trial of Judge Sharon Keller

Posted on August 16, 2009
Representatives of Peoples' Judicial Complaint Signed by About 1,900 Members of the Public to Participate in Demonstration at Trial of Sharon KellerA group of people who signed a judicial complaint against Judge Sharon Keller will hold a demonstration at 8 AM in San Antonio at the Bexar County Courthouse before Keller's trial begins on August 17...

Savannah Talks Troy Anthony Davis No. 5: Race, Death, and Justice in America

Posted on August 15, 2009
Although not directed specifically at the case of Georgia death row inmate Troy Anthony Davis and slain policeman Mark Allen MacPhail, the state of North Carolina?s new Racial Justice Act, signed into law by Governor Beverly Perdue on August 11, 2009, shines a light on one of the major aspects of the Davis/MacAllen case: that of race and the death penalty...

Judges? Dissents for Death Row Inmates Are Rising

Posted on August 14, 2009
It took just 80 words for a federal appeals court to deny Kevin Cooper?s most recent plea to avoid execution. But attached to that order was a forceful 101-page dissent by a judge, all but pleading to spare Mr. Cooper?s life.?The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man,? it began...

New bill aims to remove race from death penalty equation

Posted on August 11, 2009
On July 15th the North Carolina House voted 61-54 to approve the Racial Justice Act, which, if signed into law, would allow death row prisoners in the state to appeal their sentences if racial prejudice played a role in their sentencing. Last night, the North Carolina Senate approved the legislation, which now goes to Governor Bev Perdue for her signature...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

A Documentary Film Screening Sponsored by the Innocence Project of Florida and Tallahassee Citizens Against the Death Penalty in opposition to the pen

Posted on August 10, 2009
?Juan Meléndez - 6446? tells the incredible, true story of JuanMeléndez, who was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit.Puerto Rican migrant farmer raised in New York City, Meléndez wasaccused of murder in the state of Florida. While claiming his innocence,Juan Meléndez was convicted and put on death row for 17 years, 8 months1 day...

Study: 88% of criminologists do not believe the death penalty is an effective deterrent

Posted on August 10, 2009
A recent study by Professor Michael Radelet and Traci Lacock of the University of Colorado found that 88% of the nation?s leading criminologists do not believe the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime. The study, Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates? The Views of Leading Criminologists, published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Crimonology, concluded, ?There is overwhelming consensus among America?s top criminologists that the empirical research conducted on the deterrence question fails to support the threat or use of the death penalty...

Texas Strikes Again

Posted on August 10, 2009
We found out this weekend that Earnest Sonnier spent 23 years in a Texas prison for a rape he didn?t commit: State district Judge Michael McSpadden asked for an expedited release for Ernest Sonnier, 46, who was convicted of a 1985 sexual assault and sentenced to life in prison...

Florida justice: Tough on youths

Posted on August 09, 2009
TALLAHASSEE - While other young men were heading to college or finding their first jobs, Terrance Graham entered a state prison at the age of 19 where he will spend the rest of his life. The Jacksonville man, in the words of his own attorney, was "no angel...

Syrian Lawyer Faces Prosecution for Defending Human Rights

Posted on August 07, 2009
Amnesty International Media ReleaseFor Immediate ReleaseMonday, August 3, 2009Syrian Lawyer Faces Prosecution for Defending Human RightsContact: AIUSA media office at 202.544.0200x302A leading Syrian human rights lawyer was formally charged last Thursday in relation to his legitimate work in defending the rights of political prisoners in Syria...

Senate confirms Sotomayor for high court

Posted on August 06, 2009
Chief Justice John Roberts will swear her in Saturday at Supreme Court.WASHINGTON - Sonia Sotomayor won confirmation Thursday as the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice in a history-making Senate vote that capped a summer-long debate heavy with politics...

Gov. Kaine pardons three members of the Norfolk Four

Posted on August 06, 2009
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said today he has granted conditional pardons to three members of the ?Norfolk Four,? a group of sailors convicted of raping and killing young Navy wife Michelle Moore-Bosko in 1997 in Ocean View. Kaine said in a news conference that he has granted pardons to three sailors, still in prison, who were convicted of rape and murder...

4000 Kenyans on death row get life

Posted on August 05, 2009
More than 4,000 prisoners facing execution in Kenya had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment on Monday in the largest commutation in history, news sources reported. There have been no executions carried out in Kenya for 22 years.In a statement broadcast on the state-owned radio Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, President Mwai Kibaki said that an ?extended stay on death row causes undue mental anguish and suffering, psychological trauma, anxiety, while it may as well constitute inhuman treatment...

NAACP Youth and College Leaders Mobilize In Savannah, Georgia

Posted on August 03, 2009
Troy Davis case galvanizes young people into action The case of Troy Anthony Davis, a likely innocent man on death row in Savannah, Georgia has inspired young people across the country to take action. Members from the NAACP Youth and College Division are convening in Savannah, this week for a ?Savannah Summer Field Experience? to help save Davis? life and to learn skills that will equip them to organize in their own communities...

12 and in Prison

Posted on August 03, 2009
The Supreme Court sent an important message when it ruled in Roper v. Simmons in 2005 that children under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed were not eligible for the death penalty. Justice Anthony Kennedy drew on compassion, common sense and the science of the youthful brain when he wrote that it was morally wrong to equate the offenses of emotionally undeveloped adolescents with the offenses of fully formed adults...

DPIC & AP look at the death penalty in Pennsylvania

Posted on August 01, 2009
Forty-seven years have past since Pennsylvania last executed someone who hadn?t ?dropped their appeals.? Since restoration of the Pennsylvania death penalty in the disco era 21 people on death row have died of natural causes, 3 agreed to drop the appeals and be executed...

The Nation: Beer And Sympathy

Posted on July 31, 2009
Taxi drivers provide a perverse service to the racial conversation when they refuse to pick up black people. Clearly it would be better if they stopped, so that we wouldn't be left hailing the night air like fools or relying on white friends to sneak one past the censor like supplicants...

Troy Davis, A Man Without a Voice, Speaks for Too Many

Posted on July 30, 2009
There is an entire group of citizens in the United States who are largely ignored by liberals and conservatives alike. They are the people on Death Row whose guilt contains "reasonable doubt." For better or for worse, Mr. Troy Anthony Davis is their poster child...

Uphold the rule of law on torture

Posted on July 29, 2009
According to the Washington Post and recent articles in Newsweek the Attorney General is on the verge of making a decision on the appointment of a special prosecutor. We need for Holder to follow the facts and support the establishment of a commission of inquiry to look into the facts and the alleged abused associated with counterterrorism policies in the war on terror...

Texas Reform Creates Office for Capital Appeals

Posted on July 29, 2009
A new law in Texas will create a state ohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifffice to handle the appeals of death row inmates. The office was created in response to a series of well publicized scandals which brought international attention to the subpar representation of capital offense appeals...

Texas reporter's seen unrivaled number of U.S. executions

Posted on July 21, 2009
(CNN) -- It takes seven minutes to execute a death row inmate, according to the state of Texas.Mike Graczyk poses outside the Texas death chamber prior to an execution in January. At that rate, Mike Graczyk has spent about 40 hours of his life watching men -- and a few women -- die...

State Commissions Seek to Prevent Wrongful Convictions

Posted on July 20, 2009
(July 20, 2009) Newly created innocence commissions in New York and Texas will join a growing list of state commissions working to prevent future injustice by learning from previous mistakes. Both states have high numbers of wrongful convictions; 38 Texans and 24 New York State residents have been proven innocent through DNA testing after serving years or decades in prison...

Is it time to put the brakes on Alabama's death penalty?

Posted on July 19, 2009
Posted by Joey Kennedy -- Birmingham News April 20, 2009 3:00 AMWhat do we gain when we execute people? I supposed there's a feeling of justice. A person committed a brutal murder and we take his life in return. Eye for an eye, and such. Or maybe it's revenge for the victim's family, but does killing another make it all better? Or maybe we've deluded ourselves into thinking we're protecting society, though our prisons are pretty good at keeping people locked up and preventing them from messing with society...

As More States Weigh Improving Lineups, New Innocence Project Report Shows Extent of the Problem and Effectiveness of Reform

Posted on July 16, 2009
75% of wrongful convictions overturned with DNA testing involve eyewitness misidentification; 17 states in last two years have considered reforms(New York, NY; July 16, 2009) ?A report released today by the Innocence Project shows that while eyewitness identification is among the most prevalent and persuasive evidence used in courtrooms, it is not error-proof and is the leading cause of wrongful convictions that have been overturned with DNA testing...

'Emotional rollercoaster' of an executioner

Posted on July 07, 2009
By JAMES ELLIS - Tuesday, June 16, 2009Burl Cain, 67, is warden of the tough Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola. Some 90 per cent of inmates die while incarcerated, thanks to the length of their sentences. Since Cain became warden in 1995, violence among inmates is down 73 per cent...

?Strange Fruit? describes horrors of lynchings

Posted on July 07, 2009
By Dolores Cox Harlem, N.Y. Published Jul 3, 2009 10:12 PMJune is Black Music Month, proclaimed so by former President Jimmy Carter. In honor of Black Music Month, there was a film series showing in New York at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture based in Harlem...

Face-to-face with death row inmates at London show

Posted on July 07, 2009
By Julie MollinsLONDON (Reuters Life!) - Death row inmates depicted in oil paintings by British artist Claire Phillips, on view in London's South Bank gallery@oxo, have one thing in common."All are demonstrably innocent, or very probably innocent," according to Clive Stafford Smith, director of prisoners' rights organization Reprieve, which sponsors the touring five-day "Human Face of Death Row" exhibit on show at Oxo until July 5...

Declaration by the Presidency on behalf of the EU on the formal abolition of the death penalty in Togo

Posted on July 07, 2009
The EU welcomes the unanimous decision of the National Assembly of Togo on 23 June 2009 to abolish the death penalty for all crimes and to commute existing death sentences into life sentences. We congratulate the Togolese Parliament, the Togolese Government and the Togolese people on this important decision...

Death Penalty and Mental Illness: Families of Victims Speak out at National Convention; 'Double Tragedies' Report Released

Posted on July 07, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO, July 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- For the first time, families of murder victims have joined with families of persons with mental illness who have been executed to speak out against the death penalty.Double Tragedies, a report being released today at a special session on the first day of the annual convention of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), calls the death penalty "inappropriate and unwarranted" for people with severe mental disorders and "a distraction from problems within the mental health system that contributed or even directly led to tragic violence...

Brady claims confirmed in 11 circuit opinion in Derrick Smith

Posted on July 04, 2009
Bill Dillon exonerated in Florida Read the 11 circuit opinion in Derrick Smith in FloridaLawyer Marty McClainhttp://www.oranous.com/florida/DerrickSmith/Smith%2011th%20Cir%20Opinion%206-30-09.pdfhttp://www.oranous.com/florida/DerrickSmith/Smith%2011th%20Cir%20Opinion%206-30-09...

Watch lawyer Marty McClain in oral arguments in Florida Supreme Court in John Marek

Posted on July 04, 2009
Michael Conley in Broward Circuit Courthttp://johnmarek.us/legal/09-1080.ramWatch lawyer Marty McClain arguing in Florida Supreme Court in the case of John Marek

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.