Archive | death penalty

02 April 2010 ~ Comments Off

Hearing Scheduled in Judge Keller Conduct Case

death penalty sharon keller State Commission on Judicial Conduct Texas. Court of Criminal Appeals U.S. Supreme Court

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct has set a June 18 hearing for Judge Sharon Keller, presiding judge for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the women responsible for refusing to stay in the office after 5PM so paperwork could be filed to stay the execution of Michael Richard based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s stay of impending executions issued that same day. Keller’s refusal resulted in Richard’s execution, and since 2007 the judge’s conduct has been questioned by some as unethical.

The State Commission’s hearing will begin at 9 AM in Room 140 of the Reagan State Office Building, 105 W. 15th St (open to the public). The hearing will give Keller as well as prosecutors one last opportunity to address the Commission before they decide on a punishment for the judge. There is no state law which requires a decision within a certain time frame, however the Commission does have a variety of options on how to handle Keller’s misconduct, ranging from exonerating Keller to recommending her removal from office.
To view an Austin American Statesman article on the hearing click here.

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02 April 2010 ~ Comments Off

The Death Penalty in California

ACLU California death penalty Harris County new death conviction Texas

The American Civil Liberties Union issued a report on March 29, 2010 regarding the use of capital punishment in California. The report “Death Decline in 2009: Los Angeles Holds California Back as Nation Shifts to Permanent Imprisonment” found a number of startling facts regarding the death penalty in the nation’s most populous state, including the striking number of new death sentences, the benefits financially of life imprisonment and the changing face of death row to include a proportionally unequal number of Latinos.

First, the ACLU found that only a handful of counties in the state were responsible for sentencing 29 new people to death row in 2009. Compared with Texas, who issued 11 new death sentences in 2009, California is on track to becoming the new death penalty capital. The report also found that Los Angeles County was responsible for sentencing more people to death row than the entire state of Texas. L.A. County, which sentenced 13 individuals to death row, has superseded Texas’s own Harris County as the death penalty county of the world (Harris County, for the second year in a row, issued no new death sentences).
The report also touches on a number of important points regarding the cost of maintaining the death penalty in a state with over 700 current death row inmates, the inequalities with the criminal justice system regarding proper legal representation, and the unsettling number of new death sentences in the Latino population, causing concern over the fairness of the death penalty’s application.
The full report, with graphs, is available here
The ACLU’s response to their findings is available here

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30 March 2010 ~ Comments Off

Amnesty International 2009 report on the death penalty

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On March 30, 2010 Amnesty International published their annual report “Death Sentence and Executions 2009″. The report covers worldwide development of the death penalty including countries that carried out executions, new death sentences, and the movement toward abolishment of the practice.
The report details the 18 countries in which executions took place in 2009. The following is the list of countries that carried out executions and the estimated number of legally killed individuals:
Bangladesh (3), Botswana (1), China (in excess of 500), Egypt (5+), Iran (388+), Iraq (120+), Japan (7), Libya (4+), Malaysia (68+), North Korea (more than 1; figure unknown), Saudi Arabia (69+), Singapore (1), Sudan (9+), Syria (8+), Thailand (2), United States of America (52), Viet Nam (9+), Yemen (30+).
As Amnesty International works to end use of the death penalty, there were a total of 2001 official new death sentences issued in 2009 in 56 countries, the largest numbers reportedly coming from Afghanistan (133+), Algeria (100+), Egypt (269+), Iraq (366+), Pakistan (276), Sri Lanka (108), and the United States (105+) with unknown figures from high sentencing regions like Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, North Korea, and China.


Amnesty International, which has supported worldwide abolition since 1977. proudly cited a number of exciting developments in the move toward universal abolishment of the death penalty. For the first time since the organization began maintaining records, not a single execution took place in Europe. Additionally, there were no reported executions in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Belarus, Indonesia, Mongolia, Pakistan, St. Kitts and Nevis, and United Arab Emirates in 2009.
Greater still, two nations, Burundi and Togo, abolished the death penalty in 2009 bringing the world total of countries to have removed capital punishment from law to 95. Worldwide, 139 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice with only 58 countries continuing to retain the punishment in their legislation.
The report details regional developments and includes a variety of maps all of which can be viewed here.

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30 March 2010 ~ Comments Off

Former Governor Mark White Speaks Out Against Hood Case

Charles Dean Hood death penalty Mark White Texas. Court of Criminal Appeals U.S. Supreme Court

Mark White served as the state of Texas’ attorney general from 1979-1983 and as governor from 1983-1987 during which time he oversaw 19 executions. In 2009, the former governor was quoted in both the Houston Chronicle and Dallas Morning News regarding his waning support of the death penalty in light of wrongful executions and a poor criminal justice system.

On March 29, 2010 Mr. White spoke out once again, this time with the National Law Journal, regarding the trial of Charles Hood. Hood was convicted in 1990 for the murder of two individuals in Plano, TX; Hood was sentenced to death row. However the prosecuting attorney and presiding judge during Hood’s trial were having a secret affair, which was acknowledged by the former couple nearly two decades later. In 2010, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Hood a new sentencing trial but did not address the breach of judicial fairness with the original trial.
In February 2010, former Governor White along with 20 other former judges and prosecutors petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Hood’s petition for certiorari. In the March 29 article Mr. White addresses why the High Court should grant Hood’s petition for a new trial, “with an impartial judge and ethical prosecutor”, while citing how judicial flaws like that of an unfair and unbiased trial does nothing but damage the confidence and strength of the judicial system that citizens depend on. Although the original offense occurred over two decades ago, as the former governor states, “the passage of time doesn’t make it any less of a breach. The only thing for which we can be thankful is that an execution has not already occurred.”
To read Governor White’s full article click here.


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30 March 2010 ~ Comments Off

New Death Sentence Issued in Nueces County

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On March 5, 2010, a Nueces County jury sentenced Daniel Lopez to death for the 2009 murder of Corpus Christi Police Officer, Stuart Alexander.

Lopez is the second new death conviction of 2010.

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30 March 2010 ~ Comments Off

International Coverage of Death Penalty Decline Rates in Texas

BBC News capital punishment cost death penalty decline in death row sentences demographics Life in prison without parole

With the Supreme Court stay of Hank Skinner’s execution on March 24, 2010 much attention has been drawn to the capital punishment system in Texas and recent trends which may suggest a slow death of the institution. An article by BBC News “Is the death penalty on death row?” (March 30, 2010) cites the steady decline in new death sentences handed down in Texas courts as reason to believe that the death penalty in Texas has fundamentally moved to a less “death” oriented system.

The article draws attention to the recent trends in new death sentences, nine new death row sentences in 2009 compared to forty-eight new sentences in the late 1990s. Cost, the 2005 law providing capital punishment cases with the option of life in prison without parole, and changing demographics in the state that lean toward a more anti-death penalty stance are all cited in the article as major contributory factors to a criminal justice system that is arguably making strides toward abolition. As the article states, “In this less homogenous environment, the old certainties are being more widely questioned.”
To view the entire BBC News article click here.

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30 March 2010 ~ Comments Off

San Antonio Students Protest Death Penalty

death penalty death row inmates San Antonio Student Protest TCADP Regional Training
On Friday, March 26 2010, dozens of San Antonio college and university students from the metropolitan area, gathered on the Main Plaza to participate in the first Intercollegiate Protest for Death Penalty Truth. The event was designed to protest against Texas’ use of capital punishment, encouraging action among college students to imagine the feelings associated with an impending execution and the inconsistencies with the current criminal justice system in Texas.
The protest was organized by students from all major San Antonio area universities as a direct result from student participation at TCADP’s Central Texas Leadership Training in Wimberley on January 30, 2010.
Unlike most protests against government injustice, these students opted for no marching, yelling, or raising of signs. Instead, “each student stood at a lectern and read the last words of one of the 451 inmates executed in Texas since the death penalty’s reinstatement in 1982…then, one by one, each student lay down on the gravel…holding a white paper cross with the names of the executed written across the center.”
To read the entire San Antonio Express News article which covers the student protest, visit here.

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