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NEWS ON DEATH PENALTY
In this page you find most recent news and documents I've received or l was be able to find in Internet about death penalty. This page will be constantly under construction since here I'll insert all the news I'll be able to find. If you want to participate to add other documents, send or report them to e-mail address.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is the state�s highest authority on criminal justice matters. In recent years, a majority of the court�s jurists have demonstrated an affectionate tolerance of incompetent judging and layering, a contempt for basic fairness, and what borders on fear and resentment of justice itself. In an opinion earlier this month, the court ruled that a defendant facing execution has no right to have a competent lawyer handle his appeal. Read this Houston Chronicle's article published on January, 19, 2002 clicking here.
Number of executions, divided for year, in the Livingston prison where is imprisoned Eugene Broxton: 1997: 37 - 1998: 20 - 1999: 35 - 2000: 40 - 2001: 17 - 2002: 33- 2003: 24 - 2004: 23
Number of executions, divided for year, in the USA:
1999: 98 - 2000: 85 - 2001: 66 - 2002: 71 - 2003: 65
Total: 895 from 1976 to 2003. Of these, 317 were
executed in Texas.
To know ALL executed persons on 2001 and 2002, read this document. To have further information go to this site.
On 2002, 71 executions have been carried out in the United States, 33 of which have occurred in Texas (this included three juvenile offenders, all of whom were black). Of the 21 juvenile offenders executed in the United States, 13 have been in Texas alone. Despite the high number of executions over the past five years, Texas saw an increase in its homicide rate in 2002. This is not surprising, however, since most criminal justice experts agree that murder rates depend on such factors as demographics, economics, the drug trade and community policing, but not the death penalty.
Nearly 100 people who were sentenced to death in the United States have been exonerated and released from death row. Thus, one person has been released from death row for every 7.5 persons executed. These are startling statistics which raise serious concerns about imperfections in the legal process that can send people to their death.
Read the entire David Atwood's document published on March 2002 entitled "About imperfections in the legal process that can send people to their death" here.
In June of 2000, a search conducted at the University of Columbia by a group headed by Professor James Liebman, made sensations as it published the results on the judicial errors in capital punishment cases. Liebman�s search, entitled �A Failing System: The rate of Errors in Capital Punishment Cases from 1973 to 1995� shows that in 68% of the appeals of capital punishment cases at the state or federal level, errors appear such as to provoke their cancellation. Read this document.
Unfortunately, even in the moment in which you are reading these lines, a man, and sometimes even a woman, knows that they will soon have to die!!! Dying for electrocution, firing squad, gas chamber, hanging or lethal injection. To have information on the dates of the next executions, read this brief document.
There exists a radical and profound discrimination concerning those men of color, black and Hispanic, in the American justice system. This discrimination is obviously also present in the death rows: in Texas, in the period from 1982 to March 7th, 2002, the persons of color executed were a good 127 to every 262 white persons.
Download
here an official statistic, recently noted by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, in Word zipped format (8Kb).
Many will think that the battle against the death penalty is lost from the get-go. It's not true! Nearly 100 people who were sentenced to death in the United States have been exonerated and released from death row since the death penalty was resumed in this nation in 1976. (See also David Atwood's article "About imperfections in the legal process that can send people to their death"). Hundreds of those death row inmates obtain an appeal of the proceedings and are punished to serve a life sentence. To know how many people went out from the death rows download this "Sentenced to life" T. D. C. J. document in Excel zipped format (10Kb).
This is a Alan Elsner's article of a Washington's newspaper to understand how they live in the death row (noted by Eugene Broxton).
These are last news about death penalty, from US newspapers, I received from the COALIT Italian Coalition Against Death Penalty newsletter, you can read here.
The recent call by 3 Supreme Court justices for the court to review the constitutionality of executing juveniles gives Americans a prime opportunity to reconsider a practice shunned by almost all other countries. In September 2002 Christian Science Monitor published an Amnesty International article Stop executing juveniles.
Read here another article published on January 1st, 2003 entitled Death penalty Punish juvenile killers? Definitely. But we don't have to execute them by the Austin American-Statesman.
USA: The risk of persisting on death. Detroit police had every reason to believe Eddie Joe Lloyd was their man. He admitted killing a 16-year-old girl in a detailed written confession. He backed it up with an audiotaped account of the crime. But some 20 years later, DNA testing proved Lloyd innocent.
He was freed from jail last week after serving 17 years in prison for the crime.
See this September 8, 2002 Salina Journal's article.
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September 23rd, 2002. The state of Texas is scheduled to carry out the 800th execution in the United States since the U. S. Supreme Court's 1976 decision cleared the way for the continuation of capital punishment. Read this Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty's article.
Stop the abuse at the Polunsky Unit on death row in Livingston, Texas. There is still a petition against the abuse in the Polunsky Unit death row. Please take the time to sign it. You can find it at the following address.
USA: Free at Last. Taken from their families, sent to death row for horrendous crimes--and then cleared of all charges: Here's what it is like to be. You've been convicted of murder. You didn't do it. After you've rotted in prison for weeks, months, years (in one case 33 years), one day a judge taps his gavel, looks you in the eyes and says, in essence, "Oops. Never mind. Our mistake! You're free to go." Read this People's article,.25 November, 2002.
Lethal indifference: the fatal combination of incompetent attorneys and unaccountable Courts in Texas death penalty appeals. A comprehensive study on the Texas death penalty post-conviction process, produced by the Texas Defender Service, reveals that state habeas cases - a vital safety net designed to prevent wrongful executions and the only stage in which new claims of innocence can be raised - were repeatedly mishandled by court appointed attorneys. In 28 percent of the habeas applications the court appointed attorneys raised only claims that cannot be addressed by the courts in habeas corpus proceedings. In 39 percent appointed counsel presented no materials to support the claims. Read this document of the TDS.
Associated Press U. S. Death Row Population Falling. The number of death row prisoners dropped last year for the first time since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, the Justice Department reported. Read this document.
Illinois' Governor George H. Ryan has recently decided for a moratorium on all executions. Many people have written to him encouraging to continue in commuting the death sentences of those currently on Illinois' death row. Read his answer letter here.
 Governator George Ryan on January 11st, 2003 has cleared the state's death row and commuting the sentences of all 156 inmates who had been condemned to die. "Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious, and therefore immoral, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death" said Ryan. Ryan went a step farther in 4 other death row cases, issuing pardons for 4 men (Aaron Patterson, Madison Hobley, Stanley Howard and Leroy Orange) he said had been tortured by police into making false confessions. Taking inmates off death row may save the state money, a corrections department spokesman said. It costs the state about $27, 800 a year to house each death row inmate, said Sergio Molina, chief of communications for the Illinois Department of Corrections. By comparison, it costs just $21, 600 a year to house each maximum security inmate. Do the math, and you see that clearing out death row amounts to an annual savings of $6, 200 per inmate - roughly $1 million a year. Read this Daily Herald's article.
We don't want him to be able to buy a stamp to mail a letter to his mama. It's not vindictiveness it's justice say family of slain deputy who sues inmate for account money.
And Judge Kenneth Wise granted the request to temporarily prohibit the inmate "from use or enjoyment of any and all funds contained in his inmate account" or in the future. Read this Houston Chronicle's article.
 Look at these 16 men!! ALL are already dead or waiting for death within the end of April 2003.
13 are blacks, 3 are whites: already killed or waiting for a lethal injection.
In the United States of America. Is this civilization?
Texas death row. There are 450 inmates, 8 of them are women. Breakdown of prisoners on death row by race and ethnicity White, 32.5% - Black, 41.2% - Hispanic, 25.2% - Other, 1.1%
(Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Texas Department of Criminal Justice - January 2003).
Capital punishment.Total executions, since 1976.
Texas: 291, Virginia: 87, Montana: 59, Oklahoma: 56, Florida: 54, Georgia: 31, South Carolina: 28, Louisiana: 27, Alabama: 25, Arkansas: 24, North Carolina: 23, Arizona: 22, Delaware: 13, Illinois: 12, California: 10, Nevada: 9, Indiana: 9, Utah: 6, Missouri: 6, Mississipi: 6, Ohio: 5, Washington: 4, Maryland: 3, Nebraska: 3, Pennsylvania: 3, Kentucky: 2, Montana: 2, Oregon: 2, Colorado: 1, Idaho: 1, New Mexico: 1,Tennessee: 1, Wyoming: 1, Federal: 2.
(Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Texas Department of Criminal Justice - January 2003).
Several minutes later, 15 till 6.00pm, I was told; "We're taking you back."
Kevin Zimmerman's stay of execution: read his testimony here.
Total Number of Offenders Sentenced to Death from each County. Harris County, where Eugene Broxton was arrested, is the file-leader! Read the document here.
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