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By Robert Reich
$9.99
By Theodore Roszak
$12.89
$35
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Flickr / ThisParticularGreg
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Executing people is expensive. A new report by the Death Penalty Information Center says California is spending more than 10 times as much on capital punishment—$137 million a year—as it would on an alternative life-without-parole system. New York and New Jersey repealed ...
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Wikimedia Commons / Einarsson Kvaran
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Eighty-two years ago Sunday two Italian immigrants were executed after a dubious trial for murders someone else later confessed to. Whatever really happened, Ferdinando Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti have come to stand for the greater inequities of American justice. (Howard Zinn explains, after the jump.)
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Flickr / blmurch
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By Amy Goodman — Remarkably, the Supreme Court has never ruled on whether it is unconstitutional to execute an innocent person.
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blogs.creativeloafing.com
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Death row inmate Troy Davis might get a chance to clear his name in the 1989 murder of a Savannah, Ga., police officer, now that the Supreme Court has ordered a federal judge to grant him a new hearing.
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thechinadebate.org
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China, which carries out more executions than any country—Iran comes in a semi-close second—is pledging to reduce the number of people killed by the state. While far from abolishing the death penalty, the government is narrowing the definition of execution-worthy crime.
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AP photo / Elizabeth Williams
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Whether or not Abduwali Abukhadir Muse is 15, as his father claims, he will be tried in New York as an adult for his alleged role in holding an American ship captain as a hostage. Muse’s mother, on the other side of the world, has asked President Obama for mercy, or to at least let her be with her son.
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Flickr / danesparza
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Here’s a list of countries where you don’t want to find yourself when it comes to human rights: Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, Iraq, Pakistan and the good ol’ U.S. of A. Those six states execute more of their citizens than any others, according to Amnesty International’s latest tally. The U.S. is the fourth-worst offender.
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By Mike Farrell — “You really do hate America!” This was the parting shot from a man I had just debated on a television show shortly before the invasion of Iraq. Because he’s a notorious right-wing blowhard, I laughed it off as the raving of a crackpot in extremis.
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By Amy Goodman — Troy Anthony Davis was scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday. Two hours before the state of Georgia was to execute him, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay until Monday. It had earlier agreed to hear Davis’ case on Sept. 29, but Georgia set his execution date six days before the hearing.
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President Bush signed off Monday on the execution of Army Pvt. Ronald Gray, who has been on the U.S. military’s death row since 1988 for rape and murder convictions. Gray’s legal team is expected to appeal, and no date is set for his execution.
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A now-retired California judge who sentenced nine men to death, Donald A. McCartin, and actor-activist Mike Farrell make “an unlikely pair,” as they put it in this co-authored article. McCartin was once known as “the hanging judge of Orange County,” while Farrell has long opposed the death penalty, but today they see eye to eye.
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thewe.cc
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The International Court of Justice on Friday requested the U.S. not execute five death-row inmates in a decision that will put both the U.S.‘s controversial capital punishment policy and its historic rejection of international legal bodies in the global spotlight.
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AP photo / Brennan Linsley, pool
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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees appeared in court at the U.S. naval base’s Camp Justice for an arraignment that effectively sets the legal wheels in motion for the war crimes trials of Mohammed and his alleged 9/11 co-conspirators.
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tomroeser.com
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The fraud and racketeering case against former Illinois Gov. George Ryan has come to an end after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final request to appeal his 2006 conviction. With no other move to make, Ryan, who has been incarcerated since late 2007, will likely seek a commutation of his six-year sentence from President Bush.
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Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh, a 23-year-old Afghan student, has been sentenced to death for blasphemy because of an article he downloaded from the Internet. The verdict has aroused outrage around the world, and top U.S. and European officials have spoken with the Afghan government. However, some worry that international pressure could back Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the nation’s religious fundamentalists into a corner and therefore ensure that the execution is carried out.
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thewashingtonnote.com
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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the purported mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and five other detainees at Guantanamo Bay are facing official charges from the Pentagon that could result in the death penalty.
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AP photo / Nati Harnik
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Truthdig tips its hat this week to South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who took the Anglican Church to task for what he called its “homophobic” attitude, declaring in a recent interview with BBC Radio 4 that, “If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn’t worship that God.”
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Fifteen years ago, the “West Memphis Three” were convicted of the torture and murder of three Cub Scouts in Arkansas. New DNA evidence has bolstered the argument, laid out in two HBO documentaries and an upcoming movie, that the three teenagers convicted—one of whom was sentenced to death—were victims themselves of a community more concerned with their taste in music than evidence.
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The Supreme Court has placed a temporary moratorium on the death penalty while it considers the legality of lethal injection, which should take months. Justices Scalia and Alito dissented from the opinion, which spared prisoner Earl Wesley Berry only minutes before he was to be killed.
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Aside from fatty foods that are somehow good for you, a laissez-faire attitude toward religion and a decidedly more relaxed approach to reproduction, the biggest cultural difference between Europe and the United States could be Europeans’ general disdain for the death penalty. Lest we forget that all 27 European Union states have abolished the practice, the entire continent has taken a day to reflect upon the barbarity of execution.
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By Amy Goodman — Troy Anthony Davis and Martina Correia are fighting for their lives. He faces death by lethal injection at the hands of the state of Georgia, and she has breast cancer. Their parallel battles against insuperable odds deserve the public’s attention.
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By Mike Farrell — California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s stance on the death penalty issue raises some serious questions, according to actor, author and activist Mike Farrell, who poses several of his own in this fiery piece.
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allscifi.com
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Democratic legislators in California are upset over a new execution chamber to be built in San Quentin Prison. Some lawmakers have accused Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of trying to “bypass the Legislature” by concealing details of the project.
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It’s possible that even greater shame awaits the U.S. in 2007, apparently as early as next month. From the NYT: “An Iraqi appeals court today upheld a death sentence for Saddam Hussein in a decision that clears the way for his execution within 30 days, Iraqi officials said.”
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dc.state.fl.us
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A man executed in Florida on Wednesday took 34 minutes to die by lethal injection, and required two doses of lethal chemicals. He appeared to grimace before dying, leading some to believe he experienced pain from the procedure.
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By Molly Ivins — “If I were to make an argument against the death penalty for Moussaoui, it would be on grounds of practical public relations. Why let this guy have martyrdom and world fame when we could just put him away?”
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Afghan authorities are planning on releasing the man who faced the death penalty for converting to Christianity, but they will base the action on a technicality. So a showdown with the U.S. still looms.
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On Dec. 2 Kenneth Boyd was executed by the state of North Carolina, becoming the 1,000th person to be executed since the 1976 Supreme Court ruling Gregg v. Georgia reinstated capital punishment in the United States.
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