Today, June 29, 2022, marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Furman vs. Georgia (1972), which overturned all existing death penalty laws in effect at the time. In Furman, the Justices ruled that the death penalty system, as it was being administered, was arbitrary, capricious, and discriminatory. Justice Potter Stewart said death sentences were as […]
Category: racial bias
Update, 8:30 PM, May 19, 2021: Tonight, the State of Texas executed Quintin (“Quin”) Jones despite the pleas for mercy from his great-aunt Mattie Long, who is the sister of the victim, Berthena Bryant, as well as an outpouring of support from people worldwide touched by Quin’s heart wrenching appeal for his own life. As the first execution to occur […]
This edition of our monthly newsletter includes case updates on Ramiro Ibarra, Raymond Riles, and James Broadnax as well as an update on death row exonerations as detailed in a new report from the Death Penalty Information Center. We also hail the Commonwealth of Virginia for becoming the first Southern state to abolish the death penalty.
In this edition of our monthly newsletter, you’ll find information about four scheduled executions and how you can take action. Also, Pope Francis reiterates the “inadmissibility” of the death penalty, the Governor of California addresses systemic racism, and a new documentary film about the Texas death penalty case of Melissa Lucio is now available to watch online.
In this edition of our monthly newsletter, you’ll find information about a slew of virtual events this month, including two TCADP webinars on “future dangerousness.” We also share findings from an important new report on race and the death penalty and updates on the cases of two men who will be removed from death row based on evidence of intellectual disability.
Many of Texas’s most troubling death penalty cases are rooted in a corrosive system of racism fostered by predictions of future dangerousness, a unique facet of our state’s capital punishment statute.
In a court hearing in Harris County on Tuesday, October 3, 2017, Duane Buck pled guilty to two counts of attempted murder, including the shooting of his stepsister, in a deal that exchanged the death penalty for a life sentence plus two 60-year terms. He will be removed from Texas death row, where he has spent […]
Tonight, January 26, 2017, Terry Edwards is scheduled to be put to death for the 2002 murders of Tommy Walker and Mickell Goodwin in Dallas County. His May 2016 execution date was withdrawn to allow time for new attorney assignments, after Edwards told a Dallas court that his attorney had abandoned him. Edwards current legal team has […]