NACDL

Death Watch Chris Adams

Death Watch Chris Adams

Death Watch Colin Garrett

Louisiana jury sentences a man to death for non-murder crime; proportionality review bars prosecution seeking death in retrial; Alabama death row exoneration. Chris Adams

Death Watch Chris Adams

Death Watch Colin Garrett

Death Watch Chris Adams Death Watch December 2002 35   Federal Death penalty unconstitutional, again! The federal death penalty was declared unconstitutional for a second time this year! District Court Judge William Sessions issued the order on September 24, 2002 in U.S v. Donald Fell, 217 F.Sup

Death Watch Chris Adams November 2002 8   FBI expert admits to perjury Kathleen Lundy, a bullet lead analyst for the FBI, admits she committed perjury in the Kentucky prosecution of Shane Ragland. Shane Ragland was convicted this March for the 1994 sniper killing of Trent Digiuro, a University

Death Watch Chris Adams September/October 2002 8   Ring: Hammer of justice, bell of freedom ... all over this land To borrow liberally from Pete Seeger's classic folk song, If I Had a Hammer, the United States Supreme Court has given us a bell to ring. Let's ring it in the morning, ring it the

Death Watch Gail Evans May 2002 10   Representing Terry Clark I am meeting Terry Clark for the first time. I am nervous. We shake hands as he enters the room. He keeps his sunglasses on, sitting across a table. He tells me he wants to die “ASAP.” I am tense and he knows it. I tell him I am agai

Death Watch Chris Adams April 2002 10 99th Death Row Exoneration Juan Melendez was convicted and sentenced to die for a 1983 murder on the word of two eyewitnesses and no physical evidence. One eyewitness recanted and the other died. A man named Vernon James, now deceased, admitted to police that

Death Watch Chris Adams March 2002 10   Execution Is Unconstitutional for Mentally Retarded In Heck Van Tran v. Tennessee, 2001 WL 1538508, Tenn., Dec. 4, 2001, the Tennessee Supreme Court held that executing the mentally retarded is cruel and unusual punishment and is prohibited by the federal

Death Watch Chris Adams January/February 2002 10 Justice and Military Tribunals? “Naive and wrongheaded.” That is what Georgia Senator Zell Miller (D-GA), in an op-ed piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, call civil libertarians who question the need for secret military tribunals. After t

Death Watch Chris Adams December 2001 10   Georgia Supreme Court Finds Electric Chair Is Unconstitutional Finding that electrocution “inflicts purposeless physical violence and needless mutilation that makes no measurable contribution to accepted goals of punishment,” The Georgia Supreme Court

Death Watch Chris Adams September/October 2001 10   Mental Retardation and the Supreme Court The North Carolina Senate passed a mental retardation bill by a vote to 47-1 on July 26, 2001. Governor Easley, the former Attorney General, is expected to sign the bill and make North Carolina the 18th

Death Watch Sheryl Marsh August 2001 12 This article appeared in a series in the Decatur Daily and is reprinted with permission. Drinkard Innocent in Retrial After being behind bars seven years and 10 months, and on Alabama's death row five years, Gary Wayne Drinkard is a free man. A Morgan Cou

Death Watch Chris Adams July 2001 12 Pennsylvania Governor Restricts Funding for Capital Defense Last year, the Pennsylvania legislature allocated $614,000 for capital appellate defense training. None of the money has been spent. Governor Tom Ridge's administration has agreed to appropriate the m

Death Watch Chris Adams June 2001 12 Justice Ginsburg Supports Moratorium, Criticizes Death Penalty “People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty,” stated Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She criticized the “meager” amount of money used to defend poor clients. She also said s

Death Watch Chris Adams May 2001 10 Executing the mentally retarded cruel and unusual? The Supreme Court surprisingly agreed to revisit the issue of whether executing the mentally retarded violates the country's evolving standards of decency and is therefore cruel and unusual punishment. On March

Death Watch Chris Adams April 2001 14   NACDL Members Win Acquittal in Alabama On March 7, Terry Bonner walked out of a Birmingham courtroom a free man. After deliberating for two hours, jurors in the death penalty trial found Bonner not guilty on all counts. Two NACDL members - Wilson Myers an

Death Watch Chris Adams March 2001 11 Electrocution Electrocution is cruel and unusual punishment violating the Georgia and United States Constitutions. This is the January holding of an Atlanta trial court judge, Wendy Shoob, who outlawed the use of electrocution in a pending death penalty case.

Death Watch Chris Adams January/February 2001 12 Sleeping Lawyer Tricks A sleeping lawyer is not an ineffective lawyer? Perhaps he is effective in Houston, Texas. In another bizarre “sleeping lawyer” case from Texas, a Fifth Circuit panel held 2-1 that the Sixth Amendment's right to counsel does

Death Watch Chris Adams December 2000 13   Moratorium Movement Growing in NC Greensboro became the eighth local government in North Carolina to pass a resolution calling for a moratorium on executions on October 3. With an 8-1 vote, including the support of three pro-death penalty Republicans,

Death Watch Chris Adams November 2000 12 Triumph of Reason Puerto Rico — In July, NACDL members won a landmark victory in a death penalty case pursued by the federal government in Puerto Rico. In the government's case against Hector Acosta-Martinez, NACDL Parliamentarian M. Cristina Guiterrez a

Death Watch NACDL Staff October 2000 12 Increasing Agitation for Moratorium and Abolition Whether in response to continued documentation of innocent individuals sentenced to death, concern that the death penalty is applied in a discriminatory manner against the poor and people of color, or for ot

Death Watch NACDL Staff August/September 2000 12 First Annual Clarence Darrow Death Penalty College NACDL helped co-sponsor the first annual Clarence Darrow Death Penalty College at the University of Michigan in May. Skillfully organized by Professor Andrea Lyon, the six-day college included inte