[Vision2020] One more on death row exonerated

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Since the reintroduction of the death penalty 177 have now been exonerated.  The U.S. must join the civilized world by abolishing this penalty.

All Charges Dropped Against NJ Man Who Once Faced the Death Penalty
Posted: May 29, 2006

Prosecutors in New Jersey announced that they were dropping all charges against Larry Peterson who had been convicted of murder in 1989, saying they could no longer meet their burden of proof in his case. Peterson's conviction was overturned last year after DNA tests failed to match him with evidence from the scene of the crime. The state had initially sought the death penalty against Peterson, who is now 55 after spending 18 years in prison. The Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School in New York and state prosecutors had dozens of DNA samples from hairs and elsewhere at the crime scene tested in the case. None matched Peterson's genetic makeup. [ More ]

MENTAL ILLNESS: Rutherford Institute Calls Attention to Upcoming Virginia Execution
Posted: May 26, 2006
John W. Whitehead, founder and president of the Rutherford Institute, called for clemency for Percy Lavar Walton, a Virginia inmate scheduled to be executed on June 8. Walton is a psychotic schizophrenic who has suffered with severe mental illness since adolescence. He is on death row for three murders he committed when he was 18 years old. [ More ]

Executions in 2006 Continue Uneven Trends
Posted: May 25, 2006
With the execution of Jesus Aguilar in Texas on May 24, there have now been 20 executions in 2006: * 50% of the executions have been in Texas * 75% have been in the South * 75% of those executed were of minority race * 62% of the victims in the underlying murders were white. At the current pace, there would be 48 executions in 2006, a decline from the 60 executions in 2005, though many executions have been stayed while courts consider the lethal injection process. [ More ]

NEW VOICES: Illinois Execution in 1995 Now Seen in a New Light
Posted: May 24, 2006
Girvies Davis was executed in Illinois in 1995 after a conviction based largely on his own confession. Davis' appellate attorney was David A. Schwartz, who now serves as senior vice-president and baseball legal counsel at CSMG Sports. Schwartz writes in the Chicago Tribune that Davis "confessed" to many crimes, most of which he indisputably did not commit. Davis said that the only reason he confessed to the murder that sent him to death row was that the police threatened to kill him if he did not sign the confession. Schwartz, who was an attorney with Jenner & Block at the time he represented Davis, laments the fact that Davis' case had no DNA and that the times were different from those that led to the clearing of Illinois' death row by Gov. George Ryan in 2003. [ More ]

Death Penalty Developments in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Wisconsin
Posted: May 23, 2006
Death penalty developments in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Wisconsin have recently been featured in the news. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the case of Abdur'Rahman v. Bredesen in which the Tennessee Supreme Court held that the state's lethal injection procedure is constitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In South Carolina, lawmakers have abandoned a legislative provision that would allow the death penalty for sex offenders convicted a second time of raping children younger than 11 years old, and Wisconsin legislators have voted to place an advisory referendum question about the death penalty on voting ballots this fall. [ More ]

NEW VOICES: Newspaper Changes Its Position-'Commonsense Finding is that Death Penalty Has Failed and Should be Abolished'
Posted: May 22, 2006
An editorial in the Asbury Park Press, a newspaper that formerly supported capital punishment, called on New Jersey policymakers to abandon the state's costly death penalty and replace it with the "sure and swift" sentence of life without parole. The editorial stated that New Jersey has wasted millions of dollars on the death penalty, but has not carried out an execution since it was reinstated in 1982. [ More ]