Damien Echols

Last night Larry King spoke with Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks about the wrongful convictions of the West Memphis Three.  Damien Echols, one of the three, is on death row in Arkansas.  Watch a clip of the show.

It is so great to see some attention being paid to this case, especially just days before the Arkansas Supreme Court is set to hold a hearing on Echols' case.

Last month, supporters sent Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe 4462 printed postcards and 4515 email-cards pleading for him to support a new trial for Damien Echols.

I'll be posting updates about Damien's case as new developments occur.

On August 24, U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr. rejected Troy Davis' claims of innocence, arguing that, although the new evidence presented casts some doubt on Davis's guilt, it mostly lacks "probative value" and is not enough to prove innocence. He called it "largely smoke and mirrors."

Davis's lawyers presented the evidence during a hearing on June 23 and 24 of this year. This federal evidentiary hearing was ordered by the U. S. Supreme Court (the first time the Supreme Court has ordered such a hearing in 50 years) after reviewing affidavits provided by Davis's lawyers that stated that seven of the nine original witnesses against Davis recanted their testimony. As there was no physical evidence connecting Davis to the shooting, the majority of the case against Davis was built around eyewitness testimony, so the recantations were a significant development.

However, Judge Moore said that of the seven witnesses to admit to falsely testifying, only one was completely credible (although not important to the conviction) and two were partially credible (but would "only minimally diminish the state's case"). The other four, he said, would have had no impact on the state's case.

Davis's lawyers had wanted to call witnesses to the stand that had . However, Judge Moore refused to allow them to testify, arguing that in order for their testimony to be valid, Davis's lawyers must have first subpoenaed Coles so that he could testify on his own behalf.

Judge Moore did, however, state that executing an innocent person would violate the Eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment. He then reiterated that he does not believe that Troy Davis is innocent.

Davis was convicted of shooting an off-duty police officer who tried to intervene in a fight between two men. Davis claims he was just a witness who ran away when he heard shots fired. Coles (armed with a lawyer by his side) almost immediately went to the police station to clear his own name and implicate Davis as the shooter. Although there was no physical evidence, the police arrested Davis for murder.

Due to the lack of evidence and the sheer number of witnesses who have recanted their testimony, Troy Davis's case has garnered international attention. Even the Pope has spoken out in support of Davis.

After 19 years, Davis's case has been heard by every level of the court and he has received a stay of execution three times. In his order, Judge Moore suggested that Davis appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Davis' lawyers are doing everything they can to make sure their client is not executed before he is able to prove his innocence once and for all.

Click here to take action.

This is the face of man whose life you helped save.

"It feels like the world has stopped...Our family has gone through a lot...I'd like to thank Governor Strickland for being a just man," said Kevin's older brother Charles upon hearing the news that his younger brother would live past September 15th--that he would live to embrace his family one more time and celebrate another birthday. 

Thanks to supporters and activists like you, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland spared Kevin Keith from execution yesterday.

Strickland, who is facing a tough reelection battle and was presented with an 8-0 recommendation against clemency from the Ohio Parole Board, managed to see past political ambition and expediency and summoned the courage to do what was right.  He recognized that the execution of an innocent man could not be undone. He weighed his options and cast his vote for life.

This heroic decision is a reminder that committed individuals can make a difference--that each and every one of our actions matter--that one life matters.  If you feel moved to thank Governor Strickland, his contact info and a sample letter are below.

Thank you for standing with us as we work to end the death penalty. Thanks to you, the tide is turning.

Please consider supporting the crucial work of Death Penalty Focus. We could not do it without you.

Contact Info and Template Thank You Letter to Governor Strickland

Governor's Office
Riffe Center, 30th Floor
77 South High Street
Columbus, OH 43215-6108

Phone/Fax

General Info: (614) 466-3555
Fax: (614) 466-9354

Online: http://governor.ohio.gov/Default.aspx?tabid=150

Dear Governor Strickland,

Thank you for granting clemency to Kevin Keith.

As you noted in your commutation statement, many legitimate questions have been raised regarding the evidence in support of Mr. Keith's conviction. This evidence of innocence was never presented in its entirety before any court or jury. It would have been a tragic mistake to execute Mr. Keith when such grave doubts linger about his guilt.

This year, you demonstrated your commitment to improving the fairness and accuracy of Ohio's criminal justice system by signing into law comprehensive reform legislation to combat wrongful convictions. By granting clemency to Mr. Keith, you upheld that commitment.

I commend you for recognizing that there is no room for error when a life is at stake.

Sincerely,

Lance Lindsey

As you're aware, Death Penalty Focus has had the extraordinary good fortune to have an Executive Director, Lance Lindsey, who has advanced the cause of abolition in myriad ways over the past fifteen years.  His devotion to the issue, coupled with his enormous intelligence, integrity and strength, has been central to our great progress during his tenure.  We are everlastingly grateful for the huge contributions that he has made, both to DPF and to the abolition movement at large.

That being so, it is with decidedly mixed feelings that I write to say that Lance Lindsey has decided to embark on the next stage of his life and has thus announced his very well-deserved retirement as of April 2011.  All of us who have had the privilege of working closely with Lance lament the idea of his departure, but at the same time we celebrate our great fortune in having had such an outstanding leader for these powerfully productive years.  We know that his devotion to the cause and his support of DPF will remain strong.

Due in large part to Lance's leadership, DPF stands at the strongest point in its history.  Our circle of members and supporters has grown steadily, our programs are active and effective, our extraordinary staff continues its exemplary work, and our financial position, thanks to all of you who provide such generous support, is stable.  The abolition movement, always facing daunting odds, has made tremendous progress in public education and advocacy with DPF in the forefront.   

We are also fortunate at DPF to have an active and supportive board of directors who will soon undertake a national search for a new Executive Director.  Having once found Lance Lindsey, we are confident that we will again find the right candidate to lead DPF  toward what is now clearly inevitable: the abolition of state killing.  In that pursuit, we will continue this vital work without interruption. 

Please watch our website for the job posting and additional information.  As the organization transitions to new staff leadership, please keep us--and our goal--in your thoughts.  We will keep you advised of progress. 

Oh behalf of Lance and the Board of Directors of DPF, thank you for your ongoing commitment. 

Peace!

Mike Farrell
President, Death Penalty Focus

Kevin Keith

A possibly innocent man will die unless Ohio Governor Ted Strickland heeds the concerns of numerous law enforcement officials and tens of thousands of concerned citizens. Kevin Keith is scheduled for execution September 15th for a crime he likely didn't commit.  

Mr. Keith's conviction centered on flawed eyewitness identification. The key witness against Mr. Keith first told four people he could not identify the shooter because the shooter was wearing a mask. It wasn't until the police showed this witness a highly suggestive photo lineup, with Mr. Keith's face made larger than the others, that the witness picked out Mr. Keith.

This blog is continued on CARE2...

Well it is hard to believe but Governor Schwarzenegger has announced that he plans to “borrow” $64 million from the general fund to begin construction of the new death row housing facility. California has no budget, the Governor wants to furlough State workers, and the state is running a massive deficit, but apparently the Governor has decided the death penalty in more important. Go figure.

This is what Sen. Mark Leno and Assemblyman Jared Huffman had to say. 

Statement from Senator Mark Leno:

”While California is in the midst of a dire financial crisis, the Schwarzenegger Administration is pushing forward with the expansion of San Quentin’s death row, without first exploring any alternatives. I continue to oppose this deeply flawed project. The proposed construction and operating costs will exceed $1.6 billion over the next 11 years, and despite the cost and increased capacity, the new inmate complex would run out of space by 2014. The governor’s proposal to use General Fund dollars for this ill-conceived project at a time when he is decimating support for our children’s education and the sustenance of services for seniors and children makes no sense at all. The Schwarzenegger Administration should take the necessary steps to explore alternatives to the expansion of San Quentin before acting recklessly with taxpayer dollars and one of the California coast’s most beautiful and precious stretches of land.”

Statement from Assemblymember Jared Huffman:

“At a time when the state may be two weeks away from sending IOU’s and when the Governor is attempting to furlough 156,000 state workers citing our impending cash crisis, it is stunningly hypocritical that he is surreptitiously – and quite possibly illegally – borrowing $64 million from the state’s deteriorating General Fund in order to advance his favorite pet prison project: the $400 million “Cadillac Death Row” at San Quentin. It’s a project that has been stalled by the budget crisis, by the courts, and by the inability to sell bonds due to pending litigation and the uncertain legality of proceeding with construction. It’s also a project that the Legislative Analyst found to be so wildly expensive that they recommended scrapping it, and the State Auditor concluded that it would likely provide a very short-term solution for housing condemned inmates since the condemned inmate population would exceed its undersized capacity within three years of completion. If built, this would be the most expensive inmate housing ever built, at a cost of more than $500,000 per cell.

Read the full statements.

Now is the time to remind the Governor that California could save $1 billion in five years by replacing the death penalty with life without parole.  Watch this video and then tell the Governor to "Cut This!"

Last week, you may have read that 70% of Californians support the death penalty according to a new Field Poll.  Several newspaper headlines cited that figure.  Upon further reading, however, we learn that 42 percent of voters prefer life in prison without parole and 41 percent prefer death when given a choice between the two sentences.

The last time the Field Poll asked that question, in 2000, it found that 44 percent chose the death penalty and 37 percent favored life without parole.

These statistics reflect a marked shift in public opinion.  People are realizing that life without parole is swift, severe, and cost-effective.

While the 70 percent figure represents abstract support for the death penalty, the majority of Californians realize that the death penalty is bad public policy and prefer life without parole.

"The majority of Californians now favor permanent imprisonment over the death penalty. That includes murder victims' family members like me," said Judy Kerr in a letter to the Sacramento Bee editor.

"Victims' families know that the death penalty does not bring back a loved one, that the death penalty wastes millions each year and that the death penalty does nothing but prolong grief and healing through endless appeals. Public opinion is shifting, and this is why."

In a recent article, reporter Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle asks whether candidates running for statewide office, such as our former and perhaps next Governor Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown, Jr., and San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, who is running for Attorney General, may lose votes because of their opposition to the death penalty.

In fact, while California voters "support" the death penalty in the abstract, further questioning reveals that they actually prefer the alternative of life imprisonment without possibility of parole (LWOP), also known as permanent imprisonment, or better yet LWOP plus a provision for restitution by the prisoner to the victims' compensation fund (LWOP+R).

When offered a choice between death and LWOP, 55% of Californians polled in 2009 by the Survey Research Center at the University of Virginia preferred LWOP, and only 37% the death penalty, with 8% unsure. When LWOP+R was offered, only 26% still preferred the death penalty, while more than 66% preferred LWOP+R.

In California, LWOP, or permanent imprisonment, has actually been in place since 1977 for all persons convicted of capital crimes who are not sentenced to death. The categories of murder with "special circumstances" automatically subject to permanent
imprisonment were greatly expanded in 1978 by the Murder Penalty Initiative (Proposition 7).

Since 1977, over 3700 prisoners in Callfornia have been sentenced to LWOP, and only a handful have been released, those later found to be actually innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted.  One hundred and thirty eight death row prisoners have been released due to wrongful conviction nationwide since 1972. Apart from these cases of exoneration, permanent imprisonment in our state means exactly what it says.  A small number of prisoners who committed their crimes before the 1977 and 1978 LWOP statutes were enacted, such as Sirhan Sirhan and Charles Manson, get periodic parole hearings under an earlier law. 

Further, restitution, the "R" part of LWOP+R, is already in good part the law in California. Ironically, however, opportunities to perform various forms of work and service whose proceeds can be devoted to crime victims and their families are now often sought by individuals serving LWOP sentences but denied to them due to our overcrowded facilities. Adequate program funding could make LWOP+R not only the ideal but the consistent reality in our state, a goal worthy of action through either the Legislature or a voter initiative.

As the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (CCFAJ) showed in its report of 2008, replacing the death penalty with permanent imprisonment would save over $125 million a year. This money could be used both to strengthen prisoner
restitution programs, and to assist law enforcement at a time when in many of our counties only about 50% of murderers are caught, convicted, and imprisoned. Victim advocates stress the importance of reopening "cold cases" and getting killers off our
streets, thus promoting the public safety and doing some justice for forgotten murder victims and their families.

In short, conscientious and farsighted candidates for statewide office can and should exercise responsive and responsible leadership by fully considering the alternatives to the death penalty.

Damien Echols

Check out my blog post about Damien Echols on Care2 today.  Please add a comment and vote in the poll. We are trying to generate as many letters as we can to Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe before Damien's September 30th hearing.  Take Action here.

What would prompt someone to spend a beautiful summer day in July diving into and swimming the chilly, choppy, dangerous waters between "The Rock" - the former maximum-security prison on Alcatraz Island - and the foot of the San Francisco Bay Bridge?

For Lynn Greer, 41, it's the prospect of generating money for Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (VADP), a statewide citizens' organization dedicated to ending capital punishment in that state. Greer, a member of VADP's Board of Directors, plans to fundraise, and focus public attention on the issue of innocent people being wrongfully convicted and executed, by participating in the July 18, 2010 Alcatraz Challenge Aquathlon & Alcatraz Challenge Swim.

The annual Alcatraz Challenge Aquathlon & Alcatraz Challenge Swim, sponsored by Tri-California Events, Inc., is a USA Triathlon-sanctioned swimming and running competition. Greer chose the event as the vehicle for her fundraising and public education effort.

Greer's goal is to raise contributions in recognition of each of the 138 prisoners exonerated from death row since 1973 due to their innocence. Beginning at 8 a.m. Pacific Time on July 18, Greer will navigate the extremely strong ocean current around Alcatraz and swim 1.5 miles to the East Beach of Crissy Field in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area's Presidio Park.

Undaunted by the rough, freezing waters, Greer looks forward to the challenge. "The last time I participated in this event 10 years ago, I completed the entire triathlon in less than four hours," she says. "It is not for novices. This time, I am just focusing on the swim." She trains by swimming five to seven miles a week in the Washington, D.C. area.

Greer may be swimming against physical tides, but the "tide" of public and criminal justice opinion is gradually turning against capital punishment, especially with respect to wrongful convictions and executions. In a recent Rasmussen Reports opinion poll, 73 percent said they are concerned about innocent people executed by mistake, with 40 percent saying they are "very concerned."

Moreover, in 2009, the American Law Institute (ALI), the leading independent scholarly institute providing support for legal theories that undergird state criminal justice systems, removed the death penalty from its Model Penal Code. Among other things, the ALI cited the minimal safeguards against mistaken convictions and executions.

Greer notes that of the 35 states that still have the death penalty on their books, Virginia is second only to Texas in the number of executions carried out between 1976 and 2009 (Texas 460; Virginia 107). Moreover, she says, California, site of the athletic challenge, has a death row population of 690, but executions in the state are currently on hold due to legal challenges regarding its three-drug lethal injection execution protocol.

"Virginia and the other states implementing the death penalty should end it," asserts Greer. "It is a fatally flawed public policy which puts innocent people at risk for wrongful conviction and execution. By swimming in the Alcatraz Challenge, I expect to increase public awareness regarding the innocence issue."

# # #

For more information about Lynn Greer's swim against the death penalty, visit her web page at http://www.firstgiving.com/lynn_greer.

Check out this amazing video!

We know that advocates and community members from across the state are fighting to ensure that the vital social services that make up the safety net for California's most vulnerable populations aren't slashed. We're here with a small piece of the solution. Need to cut something? Cut this: the death penalty.

Share this video on Facebook and Twitter!

Check out this great piece by Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation director Beth Wood, "Death Penalty Only Hurts Victims' Families" posted on AOL News. The piece makes special mention of CCV and our work in California.

Also, make sure to check out CCV's latest newsletter to read about our meeting with Governor Schwarzenegger's staff and other California officials, see pictures from recent events, and find information on county coalitions throughout California! CCV Summer News 2010.

What's inside:

• News from Around the World
• A report on the International Conference held in San Francisco this month.
• Unsolved Homicides: A Public Safety Crisis by Aqeela Sherrills
• Photos from the Annual Awards Dinner
• New Books
• The Inland Valley Chapter of DPF presents the 2010 Student Essay Contest Winners! 
• Photo Gallery

The Sentry is produced in easy-to-print .pdf format. CHECK IT OUT NOW!

It has been my good fortune to serve as a judge in New Hampshire for thirty-seven years. For thirteen of those years I was presiding justice of the Durham District Court. I served as a justice of the Superior Court for eighteen years, nine of which I spent as chief justice. And I sat on the Supreme Court for six years before retiring in December of 2005. I am proud of our judicial system and the effort of judges in all our courts to treat people fairly and equally, and to protect their individual rights.

While serving as a judge, I rarely expressed my opinion on capital punishment privately, and until now I never expressed my opinion publicly. Nor did I let my personal opinions influence my judicial decisions. In fact, in 1998 I presided over the capital murder case of Gordon Perry, and on every motion filed on his behalf challenging New Hampshire’s capital punishment statute, I ruled he had not established that the law violated our constitution.

Last week, I appeared before the New Hampshire Commission to Study the Death Penalty, whose members I commend for their willingness to undertake the important and challenging task assigned to them by the legislature . My purpose in speaking to the commission was not to talk about facts and statistics or trials and cases but to address the moral issue of death as punishment.

The way we have been dealing with the death penalty for years is to talk about enacting laws, adopting procedures, establishing practices and providing mechanisms, as if by creating an elaborate process we could somehow sanitize the death penalty and thereby ignore the moral issues that capital punishment presents. We cannot.

I appeared before the Commission to answer one straightforward but complex question: Do I believe the systematic killing of another human being by the state, in my name, is justified?

My answer to that question is, No.

During my tenure as a judge, I met many people with strong opinions about capital punishment.  Through most of that period, over two thirds of those polled in the United States regularly supported the death penalty. Some people I respect still do. So you would think that anyone looking for answers based upon public opinion or strongly held views should have an easy task.

What is the problem, then?  In the face of these odds, why do we continue to struggle with the acceptability of death as punishment?  I believe one reason we engage in this process is that no matter what some people say publicly about capital punishment, deep inside many are not as certain as they proclaim.

I believe another reason is that our thinking evolves, as people, technology, and societies progress. And what is acceptable at one time in our history may become unwelcome at another. If that is true then, we are encouraged to re-examine our core principles and to consider whether death continues to be an acceptable punishment in New Hampshire.

I have great respect for the offices of the Attorney General and the Public Defender and for the integrity and competence with which the attorneys in those offices handle homicide cases. The primary source of my continuing concern about the death penalty, however, is not New Hampshire’s limited capital murder experience but my own professional exposure to criminal justice issues.

There is no question that people who commit murder must be punished and should be removed from society. Life in prison without parole does both. It is interesting to note that two states, New Hampshire, which has not employed the death penalty since before Pearl Harbor, and North Dakota which does not condone capital punishment, did not need death to achieve the lowest murder rates in the nation every year of this century.

No legal system is perfect. Human beings make mistakes. That is one reason we accept the notion that occasionally the guilty will go free and the innocent will be convicted.  But I do not believe anyone accepts the notion that it is alright for a person to be wrongfully executed. So with the most respected judicial system in the world, how can we willingly embrace a sentence which cannot be reversed after it is imposed; and how can we continue to believe that it is morally acceptable for the state to take a human life?

My answer is, we cannot.

As most of us, I have never experienced the emotions felt by a murder victim’s loved ones, and I may never know for sure that I could not be persuaded by the desire for personal revenge to seek the death penalty for a person I knew killed someone I love. But for me, neither of these deficiencies makes opposition to the death penalty any less compelling.

I am not a death penalty expert.

I am not a spokesperson for the judiciary.

I am one New Hampshire citizen; one person, who believes it is not necessary to kill to show that killing is wrong.

So after thirty-seven years on the bench; after presiding over hundreds of jury trials; after sitting on numerous criminal cases; after listening to witnesses in scores of sentencing hearings; after considering information in thousands of probation reports; after imposing sentences upon countless convicted defendants; after entertaining the arguments of lawyers at every level of skill; after talking with a host of judges and corrections officials; and after continued personal reflection; this is what I believe about capital punishment:

• The threat of its use is not a deterrent to the commission of a homicide, because those who kill do not consider the sentence before they act or do not expect to be caught, or both.
• The threat of its use is not necessary to protect the people of New Hampshire for the same reason.
• Its abolition does not dishonor those who serve in law enforcement because honor comes from personal pride and earned respect, not from the ability of the state to execute a human being.
• Its abolition does not diminish the voice of murder victims because the right of all victims to be heard is intended to come at the time defendants are sentenced not at the time they are charged.
• It provides no more justice than life in prison without parole because justice is not measured by the sentences we impose.
• To seek and carry out the death penalty costs the state much more in time and taxes than to prosecute and confine a person to prison for life.
• To seek and carry out the death penalty consumes inordinate resources of courts, prosecution, defense and law enforcement.
• The decision whether to seek the death penalty is too easily swayed by public opinion, political pressure and media attention.
• Its potential as a prosecutorial tool is outweighed by its capacity for misuse.
• It is too easily subject to selective prosecution.
• It is too likely to be imposed upon minorities and the poor.
• It is too likely to depend upon the persuasiveness of lawyers.
• Its imposition is too readily subject to the emotions of individual jurors.
• Its imposition is too clearly dependent upon the composition of the particular jury empanelled for each case.
• It inevitably leads to disparate sentences.
• It creates the unacceptable risk that a person may be wrongfully executed.
• It exalts rage over reason.
• It diminishes our character as a people.
• And in the end, I believe it serves just one purpose: vengeance.
  

Some good news on the sentencing front in California.  Juries in San Bernardino County, known for its high number of death verdicts, have started to turn away from the death penalty. Jurors have reject death in at least three cases in as many months. In the most recent case, jurors rejected a death sentence in favor of life without parole for Mathew Manzano.  

The prosecuting attorney in the Manzano made an interesting comment to the Press-Enterprise:

"The reality is, life in prison without the possibility of parole is the better of the two punishments," said Supervising Deputy District Attorney Michael McDowell. "But there is the emotional quality about the title of 'death,' even though it would likely never be carried out."

By SCOTT CHRISTIANSON

Fifty years ago, in May 1960, two events altered how many Americans viewed capital punishment and the Holocaust.

In California, after a 12-year fight on death row, Caryl Chessman was executed at San Quentin prison. A few weeks later, in Buenos Aires, Israeli agents seized Adolf Eichmann, the infamous Nazi fugitive who helped send more than 400,000 Jewish men, women and children to their deaths. His public trial helped to reawaken global awareness about Germany's genocide against the Jews.

While there were many differences between the two cases, both involved the killing apparatus known as the gas chamber.

Eugenicists had envisioned lethal gas as a quick, practical, and humane approach to cull society of its burdensome "unfit." After the technology was developed in the United States by industry's chemical warfare and pesticide complex, the execution method was first carried out in Nevada in 1924, on an imprisoned Chinese immigrant from San Francisco, Gee Jon, who had been sentenced for murder.

By the late 1930s, seven additional states including California had adopted lethal gas as their official method of "humane" capital punishment instead of hanging or electrocution. One company, Eaton Metal Products of Denver, built several patented gas chambers to carry out hundreds of legal executions using hydrogen cyanide. German, American and British chemical firms collaborated in a cartel that manufactured massive quantities of deadly Zyklon-B. Many prominent thinkers of the day, including Nobel Prize-winning scientist Alexis Carrel, openly recommended the lethal chamber for a wide array of social outcasts.

But then the Nazi regime picked up on the idea, making gas chambers their preferred instrument for mass murder. Suddenly, the innocent victims numbered in the millions.

The highly publicized Chessman and Eichmann dramas revealed the horrors of gas-chamber executions and served to strip away the masks of kindness and indifference from capital punishment in general. As a result, both episodes helped turn many people in the world, including a majority of Americans, against executions.

It may seem hard to believe now, but from 1953 to 1966, the portion of Americans favoring the death penalty dropped from 70 to 42 percent, in tune with international trends. By the late 1960s all but 10 states abolished capital punishment. Executions became more and more infrequent, so that from 1968 to1977, nobody was legally executed in the United States.

During the moratorium, however, conservatives mounted a backlash to reinstitute capital punishment. As governor of California in 1973 Ronald Reagan became the first major figure to advocate a "better" method of execution. Although lethal injection had been used on a large scale by the Nazis, Reagan touted needle executions as "humane" and "painless." As lawmakers seized on the suggestion to repackage their old, discredited practice, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, California and other states eventually adopted it as their official method. Over the next several years, prison gas chambers at San Quentin and elsewhere became lethal injection chambers.

In 1994 a federal district court in San Francisco found execution by lethal gas to be "cruel and unusual punishment," and the last gassing was carried out in 1999 in Arizona, leaving lethal injection as the dominant surviving method.

Now, however, based on more than a quarter-century of experience with carrying out lethal injection executions in the United States, needle executions have also proved problematic, on several counts. Many appear to have been botched, and the participation of medical personnel in such procedures presents a huge ethical quandary for healers bound by the Hippocratic oath. In a deeper sense, spurred by the lessons of the gas chamber, pretexts of killing with kindness and humane executions went out with the 20^th century, thereby removing another rationale for the death penalty.

Today, American popular support for capital punishment may be waning once again. The percentage favoring executions dropped from 80 percent in 1994 to 65 percent in 2009, and that reflects only part of the decline, for if given an alternative, a majority of the public prefers life without parole. Killing is not the answer.

Scott Christianson is the award-winning author of numerous books, including The Last Gasp: The Rise and Fall of the American Gas Chamber, published by the University of California Press.

Today, the San Francisco Chronicle posted three fantastic letters to the editor responding to the Democratic Party's call for an end to the death penalty.

Follow the link below to read letters by Judy Kerr, a murder victim family member, Nick Scales, a Republican, and Nancy Oliveira, a concerned citizen:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/24/ED471DIOU9.DTL

This piece written by Bob Egelko is fantastic!  I'd like to share this link with you:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/20/MN2J1DF46L.DTL

The United State Supreme Court ruled today that it is unconstitutional to sentence a juvenile offender to life in prison without parole when the crime does not involve murder, given the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing the majority decision of the US Supreme Court in Graham v. Florida, said that the sentence is exceedingly rare," that “a national consensus has developed against it and it has been “rejected the world over.”

“The judgment of the world’s nations that a particular sentencing practice is inconsistent with basic principles of decency,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “demonstrates that the court’s rationale has respected reasoning to support it.”

This reasoning applies to the death penalty as well.  We're on our way.

Lance Lindsey, Executive Director of Death Penalty Focus

May 2, 2010 marked that 50-year anniversary of the execution of Caryl Chessman. Chessman's execution was incredibly controversial and was the catalyst for many young people to become activists against the death penalty.  DPF's own Executive Director, Lance Lindsey, remembers the days and weeks leading up to the execution in vivid detail. The case sparked his activism against the death penalty.  Attorney General Jerry Brown was one of the most vocal opponents of the execution as he lobbied his father, then-Governor Pat Brown to halt it. Governor Pat Brown eventually allowed the execution to go forward, but later admitted that it was one of his biggest regrets in his book Public Justice, Private Mercy.

We'd like to express our gratitude to the hundreds of supporters who have been fighting the good fight against the death penalty since 1960, and the tens of thousands more who have joined the struggle since then.

Take a look at this short booklet featuring some of these extraordinary heroes.

Let's make sure it doesn't take another fifty years to get rid of the death penalty once and for all.  We are getting closer every day.