The StandDown Texas Project

Thursday Webcast

"Making Communities Safer By Abolishing The Death Penalty: Live Internet Video Teleconference To Explore Views of Law Enforcement Professionals," is the news released issued by the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty announcing the webcast.  It's via PR Newswire and the Sacramento Bee.

As Californians prepare to vote on a measure to repeal the death penalty, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty will present a live online conference exploring how communities will be safer without the death penalty starting at 11 a.m. Pacific time on Thursday, October 25, 2012. The event will be moderated by Professor Charles Ogletree, founder of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard University.

"This is a conversation that all Californians need to be a part of," said Diann Rust-Tierney, Executive Director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "Especially with the election coming up, we want to help people look at the resources that go into maintaining capital punishment and explore how those resources can be better spent to make our communities safer."

Joining the conversation will be Kirk Bloodsworth, the first person exonerated from death row using DNA technology, Ron McAndrew, former warden of Florida State Prison who conducted that state's final electrocutions, and Jerry Givens, former corrections officer from Virginia who put 62 men to death during his 17 years as an executioner.

The interactive conference may be seen on the website http://abolition2012.ncadp.org/ and viewers are invited to submit questions to the panelists using the hashtag #abolition2012.

Givens and McAndrew are participating in the on-line conference as they traverse the Central Valley on a speaking tour in support of Proposition 34. The Proposition 34 ballot initiative will end the death penalty in California and redirect some of the savings to law enforcement efforts to solve unresolved homicides and rapes. The two are among eight former corrections officials who participated in executions across the country who have signed an open letter to the voters of California urging passage Proposition 34.

More on the former wardens at the link.

Earlier coverage from California begins at the link; also available, more on Prop. 34 at SAFE Caliornia.

Damien Echols' Book, Life After Death

"After Jail and Release, New Fame as an Author," is a New York Times report by Dave Itzkoff.

On a Thursday afternoon walk along Canal Street, Damien Echols was reflecting on how this busy thoroughfare once nourished him in the first few months after his August 2011 release from a super-maximum-security prison in Arkansas.

Arriving from a life spent largely in solitary confinement and awaiting a death sentence, Mr. Echols was starved for human interaction and feasted on this downtown Manhattan smorgasbord teeming with awed tourists, stubborn natives and street peddlers hawking unfamiliar wares as if it were a five-course dinner.

Now, however, Mr. Echols compared this same block to a far less appetizing meal: “A sack full of McDonald’s hamburgers,” he called it.

It’s not that Mr. Echols, 37, one of the defendants in the notorious West Memphis Three murder case and the author of a new memoir, “Life After Death,” has become tired of a frantic, indifferent city or jaded by his own long-sought, hard-won freedom.

But after a year on the outside he finds himself an unlikely and uncomfortable celebrity. He is famous mostly because of things for which he does not want to be recognized, yet he is unable completely to shun the spotlight he says he needs to win himself a full exoneration.

“You can have all the evidence in the world, and that’s still only 50 percent of the fight,” said Mr. Echols, who speaks in a soft but resolute voice. “The other 50 percent is media. You have to get the media to pay attention. If not, they’ll sweep it under the rug and keep going.”

Tall and lean with long black hair, Mr. Echols is most widely known for having been convicted in 1994, along with Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr., for the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, Ark., a crime the three men say they did not commit. Last year Mr. Echols, Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Misskelley were released, after almost 20 years, in a deal that required them to plead guilty even though they continue to maintain their innocence.

Since then Mr. Echols has lived a bifurcated existence. He has become well known from the three “Paradise Lost” documentaries, directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, that chronicled the West Memphis Three case, and he has spent time with several of the entertainment-world luminaries who fought for his release and have helped finance his exoneration efforts, including Johnny Depp, Eddie Vedder and the “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson. (Mr. Jackson and Mr. Echols are also among the producers of a coming documentary, “West of Memphis.”)

But Mr. Echols says his private life is happily mundane. He and his wife, Lorri Davis, live in Salem, Mass., a city with long connections to magic and the dark arts that has become a modest mecca of New Age shops and meditation centers; he calls it “the only place on earth where I’m in the majority.”

"Freedom After Fire Ants and Tumult," is the Times' book review by Janet Maslin.

Eighteen and a half years after he was sentenced to death for participating in the murders of three 8-year-old boys in Arkansas, Damien Echols finds himself in Faireyland. Mr. Echols’s new book, “Life After Death,” has a Shepard Fairey-inspired cover design that’s as coolly lionizing as Mr. Fairey’s “Hope” poster for President Obama. The book has a champion in Johnny Depp, who has compared Mr. Echols’s writing to Dostoyevsky’s. And his story is the subject of a forthcoming documentary, “West of Memphis,” even though that story has been exhaustively told in the three “Paradise Lost” films that paved the path to Mr. Echols’s release from death row.

These are mind-bending new circumstances for a guy who grew up as an impoverished loner, sardonically described himself as white trash, and spent his years of incarceration noticing the most grotesque, dehumanizing aspects of prison life. Yet “Life After Death” tries to reconcile all these extremes into a single narrative, and to a great extent it accomplishes this magic trick. By the way, Mr. Echols spells that word “magick,” just as one of his favorite writers, the very spooky Aleister Crowley, did. It was Mr. Echols’s teenage taste for the occult, heavy metal and black clothing — a look inspired by Mr. Depp in “Edward Scissorhands,” he says — that initially made him a target for the vindictive and provincial police in West Memphis, Ark.

“Life After Death” does not discuss the details of that triple murder case and the long, botched investigation and trial that followed. For one thing, that story is not over. Last summer Mr. Echols, now 37, and his two cohorts in what became known as the West Memphis Three, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr., were freed on an Alford plea, an unusual technicality whereby the defendants were released but not vindicated. The accumulated fan support, financial backing and legal muscle that have rallied around Mr. Echols suggest that his champions will continue to fight on his behalf.

But he is sick of that story anyway. So “Life After Death” is a dual memoir, partly about Mr. Echols’s boyhood and partly about his prison life.

Tonight, Echols will be signing copies of his book in Tempe, Arizona.  "9/24: Damien Echols talks 'Life,' at Changing Hands in Tempe," is by Randy Cordova for the Arizona Republic, features a Q&A with the author.

As one of the West Memphis Three, Damien Echols spent nearly two decades on death row for the murders of three Arkansas Cub Scouts in 1993, a crime he says he didn't commit. Last year, due to a lack of evidence, the men were released amid a flood of publicity.

And:

Q: It must also be a shock because people see you in magazines with people like Johnny Depp and think, "Oh, he's living the life."

A: People see the glamour angle or some red-carpet thing with Johnny, but they don't know for the past month I've been homeless, and we've (he and wife, Lorri Davis) been struggling to get a place to stay. Tomorrow, we move to Massachusetts, but we've been moving from hotel to hotel or staying with friends. When we left Arkansas, we literally felt like refugees. I did not have one single penny in my pocket or a change of clothes. If it wasn't for people helping us and trying to get us on our feet, we would have been screwed.

Blue Rider Press, the book's publisher, has distributed a list of author events.

September 21 – New York, NY | Barnes & Noble, Union Square – 7:00 PM

September 24 – Tempe, AZ | Changing Hands Bookstore – 7:00 PM

September 26 – Los Angeles, CA | UCLA Freud Playhouse (Book Soup presents) – 7:00 PM

September 28 – Seattle, WA | Seattle Town Hall – 7:30 PM

October 11 – Minneapolis, MN | Innocence Project Minnesota – 7:00 PM

October 12 – Kansas City, MO | Rainy Day Books at Unity Temple – 7:00 PM

October 14 – Nashville, TN  | Southern Festival of Books

October 26 – Denver, CO | Tattered Cover LoDo – 7:30 PM

October 27-8 – Austin, TX | Texas Book Festival

October 29 – Tulsa, OK | All Souls Unitarian Church (Booksmart presents) – 8:00 PM

Earlier coverage of Damien Echols and the West Memphis Three case begins at the link; more on Life After Death, also available.

CT Governor Speaks on Repeal at NAACP Meeting

Today's Hartford Courant reports, "Malloy In Houston, Addresses National NAACP Convention On Death Penalty."  It's by Christopher Keating.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy spoke Monday at the national NAACP convention in Houston regarding Connecticut's repeal of the death penalty this year.

And:

"Earlier this year, Connecticut joined 16 other states and the rest of the industrialized world in replacing capital punishment with life in prison without the possibility of parole,'' Malloy said Monday in a statement. "It's an issue that stirs deep emotion — dividing families and communities, but it also ultimately speaks to our common goal of ensuring integrity in our justice system. I want to thank the NAACP, and Ben Jealous in particular, for their support on this issue.''

Malloy spoke at the 103rd annual convention in Texas — four months after Jealous, the national NAACP's president and CEO, joined Malloy at a press conference at the state Capitol in Hartford to advocate for repeal. Jealous had also visited Hartford in June 2009 and spoke to Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell on the telephone about the death penalty. Rell vetoed a bill that would have repealed capital punishment at the time, and Jealous said that the veto was "a cowardly act on a serious issue'' by a Republican governor.

"We are proud to recognize Governor Malloy for his leadership at our annual convention, " Jealous said in a statement released by Malloy's office. "In signing the bill to repeal capital punishment in Connecticut, Governor Malloy demonstrated a courageous commitment to civil rights and he demonstrated common sense.''

"Connecticut governor gets NAACP award," is the AP filing, via the Austin American-Statesman.

The award, a crystal bowl, was presented to Malloy Monday in an appearance at the civil rights group's annual convention in Houston, the largest city in Texas, the nation's most active death penalty state.

Malloy in April signed a measure that replaces capital punishment in Connecticut with life without parole. The former prosecutor tells delegates he once was a death penalty supporter but changed his view because he believes it's been applied disproportionately to the poor and minorities or because of the victims' race.

NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous says Malloy's action not only fulfilled a campaign promise but also represented standing up for civil rights.

Earlier coverage from Connecticut begins at the link; coverage of Gov. Malloy's signing the repeal legislation is also available.

The Inferno

Kay Campbell posts, "Prison chaplain questions death penalty value," at the Huntsville Times.

In 1981, Philip Workman walked into a Wendy’s restaurant in Memphis, brandished a gun, and had the employees hand him the money out of the cash drawer.

Cornered moments later by police officers in a corner of the parking lot, Workman fired the gun. A police officer fell.

In 2007, Workman was executed for that homicide.

Trouble is, says the Rev. Joseph Ingle, who will speak in Huntsville Tuesday, Workman’s gun is not the one that killed that police officer.

The officer, according to forensic evidence analyzed after Workman’s ‘82 trial, was killed by the kind of bullet that is in police pistols, not Workman’s. The officer, in short, appears to have been killed by another officer’s shot.

Ingle’s latest book, “The Inferno: A Southern Morality Tale,” chronicles what happened between that moment in the parking lot and Workman’s execution by lethal injection 26 years later.

“It was pretty much a nightmare,” Ingle said this week from his home office in Nashville. “If you ever think the issue of capital punishment and our criminal justice system aren’t politically fraught, you need to take another look. It is beyond appalling.”

And:

Rather than take a United Church of Christ congregation, Ingle chose to become a self-supporting prison chaplain. He volunteers in Riverbend Maximum Security Prison in Nashville. From 1974 until 1983, he was the executive director of the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons, a multi-state organization that sought to abolish the death penalty.

Abolishing the penalty makes sense not only to avoid executing people for crimes they didn’t commit, but also in simple dollars and cents.

“Nationally, there is a move away from capital punishment,” Ingle said, “but you don’t see that in the South. Since 1977, more than 93 percent of the executions in the U.S. have been in the South.”

And patterns for those executions follow disturbingly familiar paths of racial discrimination.

“If you kill a white person, you are 11 times more likely to die for that crime than if you kill a black person,” Ingle said. “And it’s even worse if you’re a black person and you kill a white person. Then you are 22 times more likely to die.”

The article notes that Ingle will be speaking the evening of Tuesday, June 19th at a meeting of the Interfaith Mission Service at the 88 Buffet Restaurant on University Drive in Huntsville.

The Inferno is available at the link from Amazon.com.  He's also the author of Last Rites.

Philadelphia Event

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports, "An effort to fund art instead of death row," by A.D. Amorosi.

The Philadelphia poet, painter, musician, and activist Aja Beech spent the Memorial Day weekend — whose official observance commemorates those who died serving their country — finalizing the annual "Execute Art Not People" event, which seeks to redirect state funds from prison death rows to arts and education programs.

 "With everyone volunteering time and space, we had to work around some very busy schedules — quite a round-the-clock labor of love," says Beech, noting this year’s participation by Rittenhouse Square’s Ethical Society, host of Friday’s exhibition, and the Mural Arts Program, which will hold a related interactive painting session.

Interactive involvement from across Philadelphia’s arts scene has been key to expanding the event, which was started in Harrisburg five years ago by Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (PADP). Beech has been the regional face of the operation since 2010.

"The interactive-art thing has always been an important aspect of the event, so that people experience the art and its relationship to the death penalty," says Beech, author of a 2011 book of poetry titled Beccaria, after 18th-century Milanese philosopher and jurist Cesare Beccaria, who opposed the death penalty.

To that end, on Friday evening "Execute Art" will screen Concrete, Steel and Paint, a 2009 documentary about the Mural Arts Program’s work inside Graterford Prison. It also will display artwork by prisoners. Among them is Charles Lawson, who is serving a life term at Graterford, works with Mural Arts’ Healing Walls program there, and is a cofounder of Art for Justice, which encourages prison artists.

And:

Screening/Exhibition  Execute Art Not People Free. 6-9 p.m. Friday at the Ethical Society of Philadelphia, 1906 Rittenhouse Square. For information, e-mail [email protected], or call 267-639-6169

News From Texas Defender Service

Texas Defender Service currently has an eBay event going on with some great items for auction.

TDS has announced that it will also be holding a fundraising reception in Austin on May 30 to recognize the new Chair of the TDS Board of Directors, Jordan Steiker; founder of TDS' Trial Project, John Niland; and, TDS' new Executive Director, Kathryn Kase.  To be a sponsor, or for more information, contact Rebecca Bernhardt.

Another Academic Tribute to David Baldus

"Race and the Death Penalty: A Tribute to the Life and Work of David C. Baldus," is the title of a program at the University at Albany on Friday, April 20.  It will mark the the addition of the Baldus' personal papers to the National Death Penalty Archive, at UAlbany.

Here's the program announcement:

The University at Albany 's School of Criminal Justice and the University Libraries are pleased to invite the public and the University community to an event to be held on Friday, April 20 at 3:30 in the Standish Room, on the third floor of the Science Library, to announce the addition of the personal papers of the late David C. Baldus, Joseph B. Tye Professor at the University of Iowa College of Law, to the National Death Penalty Archive.

David Baldus's research and scholarship on the influence of race in the administration of the death penalty are unparalleled.  His study of racial disparities in the application of Georgia's death penalty served as the foundation of the landmark Supreme Court case, McCleskey v. Kemp (1987).  In that decision, by vote of 5-4, the justices upheld Georgia's death penalty law against constitutional challenge despite dramatic race-of-victim differences in capital charging and sentencing decisions that were revealed by "the Baldus study."  The McCleskey decision was issued a quarter century ago, on April 22, 1987.  Speakers at the April 20 event will reflect on the legacy of McCleskey v. Kemp and issues involving race and capital punishment as they recognize David Baldus's enduring commitment to equal justice under law and comment on the significance of including his papers within the National Death Penalty Archive.  Speakers will include:

Professor Catherine Grosso, Michigan State College of Law
Dr. Alice Green, Center for Law and Justice
Mr. David Kaczynski, New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
Mr. Brian Keough, M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University at Albany
Professor James Acker, School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany

Discussion and a question-and-answer session will follow.  Refreshments will be available.  The event is free and open to the public.  For additional information, contact: Brian Keough at [email protected].

Last October, The University of Iowa College of Law held an Academic Conference and Tribute to honor his work and life; archived video is at the link.  Earlier coverage of David Baldus and his work is also available.

Examining When Justice Goes Awry

That's the title of Gary Craig's column in today's Rochester Democrat & Chronicle of New York state.  Here's an extended excerpt:

Jonathan Gradess sees a certain logic in holding a conference on wrongful convictions in Monroe County.

“I like the idea that (the conference) is going to be in a jurisdiction that has been in the vanguard of mistakes,” said Gradess, who heads the New York Defenders Association. “It’s sort of like taking the death penalty to Texas. It’s taking wrongful convictions to Rochester.”

A statement that stings some in law enforcement but can’t be denied is that Monroe County has had its share of high-profile wrongful convictions.

Growing research into misidentifications by victims and false confessions by the accused show that wrongful arrests and convictions likely can be curbed. And on Friday, April 20, the Rochester Institute of Technology’s criminal justice and psychology departments will host a conference with the leading experts in these topics as well as others.

Among the speakers at the conference, titled “Justice Miscarried: Convicting the Innocent,” will be John Jay College psychology professor Saul Kassin, an expert in false confessions; Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project; John Jay College professor Jennifer Dysart, an expert in eyewitness identification; Steven Barnes, who spent 20 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit; and Eugene Pigott Jr., an associate judge on New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.

“This conference will help people truly understand the peer-reviewed research that explains why — despite their best intentions — eyewitnesses so often misidentify innocent people as the perpetrators of crime,” said LaVerne McQuiller Williams, associate professor and head of RIT’s criminal justice department. “It will also address why innocent people falsely confess to having committed crimes and the threat that prosecutorial misconduct presents in convicting the innocent.”

The 2012 New York State Wrongful Convictions Conference will be held April 20.  Registration is free, but ends on April 12.

Teleforum Tuesday

The Constitution Project & The Federalist Society present a teleforum debate tomorrow.  It's free and open to the public; all you need is a telephone to dial in.
 
The Supreme Court and Access to Effective Counsel
 
Tuesday, April 3, 2012 at 1:30 pm (EDT)/ 12:30 pm (CDT)

Dial 888-752-3232 to join the call
No passcode required.
 
George Kendall, Of Counsel at Squire Sanders
and
Dean Mazzone, Chief of the Enterprise and Major Crimes Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office
 
Discuss four recent landmark U.S. Supreme Court Decisions
 
The Supreme Court recently clarified the rights of defendants in criminal cases to effective assistance of counsel during plea negotiations in two closely related decisions, Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye. In two other decisions earlier this Term, Maples v. Thomas and Martinez v. Ryan, the Supreme Court ruled on federal court review of state criminal convictions when counsel has been ineffective or abandoned a client in the post-conviction appeals process. All four cases will significantly affect criminal defendants' access to effective counsel at the front end of the criminal process, during plea bargaining, as well as the back end, during state collateral appeals.
 
On Tuesday, April 3rd at 1:30 pm EDT, join The Constitution Project and The Federalist Society for a teleforum debate of these recent decisions and their impact on the criminal justice system. Mr. George Kendall, Of Counsel at Squire Sanders, and Mr. Dean Mazzone, Chief of the Enterprise and Major Crimes Division of the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office, both of whom are well-respected experts on the criminal justice system, will discuss their differing views about the Court's decisions in these cases.

You can also find out more about the Constitution Project's Access to Courts Committee.

Study: Prosecutors Not Disciplined for Misconduct

That's the title of Brandi Grissom's Texas Tribune post on a forum on prosecutorial misconduct held yesterday tat UT Law.

In 91 criminal cases in Texas since 2004, the courts decided that prosecutors committed misconduct, ranging from hiding evidence to making improper arguments to the jury, according to data that the Innocence Project will release today.

None of those prosecutors has ever been disciplined.

“It paints a bleak picture about what’s going on with accountability and prosecutors,” said Cookie Ridolfi, founder of the Northern California Innocence Project, who researched misconduct data in Texas and other states.

At a symposium today at the University of Texas at Austin, exonerees Michael Morton of Texas and John Thompson of Louisiana, along with lawyers and legal scholars, will discuss the need for increased accountability for prosecutors nationally and in Texas. The symposium is part of a national accountability campaign by the New York-based Innocence Project.

And:

“There’s no disincentive for a prosecutor to do it unless he or she has an internal moral code themselves,” Ridolfi said. In a study of California cases, her organization reported that from 1997 to 2009, courts found 707 instances of prosecutorial misconduct. There were just six instances in which prosecutors were disciplined.

As more inmates are being freed based on DNA evidence, Ridolfi said, more cases of misconduct are being identified. Although it is often the same prosecutors who repeatedly engage in misconduct, she said, the problem reflects poorly on the entire justice system.

“It’s basically bringing down the integrity of all the district attorneys’ offices,” she said.

In Texas, Ridolfi said, she found only one instance in which a prosecutor was publicly disciplined, and it took place before the time period her group studied. Terry McEachern, who prosecuted the infamous Tulia drug cases in which black defendants were convicted of drug charges concocted by a rogue investigator, received a two-year probated suspension of his law license in 2005 and a $6,225 fine.

"New Research Illustrates Lack of Accountability for Prosecutors in Texas," is the news release issued by the Innocence Project and Prosecutorial Oversight.  Here's the beginning:

New research released today by the Prosecutorial Oversight coalition illustrates the lack of accountability and transparency for prosecutorial misconduct in Texas. The research will be addressed at a symposium today at the University of Texas School of Law that will include panelists with backgrounds from all aspects of the criminal justice system addressing systemic and legal approaches for reducing prosecutorial error and misconduct.

The Austin event marks the second stop on a national tour organized by the Prosecutorial Oversight coalition, which includes the death row exoneree John Thompson, who was stripped of $14 million in civil damages for prosecutorial misconduct by the U.S. Supreme Court in Connick v. Texas; the Innocence Project; the Veritas Initiative, Northern California Innocence Project’s prosecutorial accountability program; the Innocence Project of New Orleans; Voices of Innocence; and local partners, the Texas Center for Actual Innocence; and the Actual Innocence Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law.

“No one is disputing that prosecutors have tremendous responsibility, and the vast majority do a good job under difficult circumstances.  But now that the Supreme Court has given prosecutors almost complete immunity for their actions, we need to develop systems of accountability for dealing with those prosecutors who violate their ethical obligations,” said Jennifer Laurin, Assistant Professor, University of Texas School of Law.

The research released today was conducted by the Veritas Initiative, which issued a groundbreaking report on prosecutorial misconduct in California last year.  The group reviewed all of the published trial and appellate court decisions addressing allegations of prosecutorial misconduct between 2004-2008. To see what, if any, consequences prosecutors face for their misconduct, Veritas looked at Texas’ public attorney disciplinary records from 2004 to November 2011.

From 2004 to 2008, courts found that prosecutors committed error in 91 cases.  Of these, the courts upheld the conviction in 72 of the cases, finding that the error was “harmless.”  In 19 of the cases, the court ruled that the error was “harmful” and reversed the conviction.  From 2004 until November 2011, only one prosecutor was publicly disciplined by the Texas Bar Association, and this was from a case that arose before 2004.

There's much more at Prosecutorial Oversight.  Earlier coverage of the cases of Michael Morton and John Thompson begins at the links.  Related posts are in the prosecutorial misconduct index.

More Reviews of Raymond Bonner's Book; Upcoming Author Events

Raymond Bonner's Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, is getting national attention in book reviews, and his author events continue with stops in Washington, DC and Austin.

Tomorrow, Bonner will appear at Washington, DC's celebrated Politics & Prose, where many Book TV author events are taped for later airing.  On March 7, Bonner is at Austin's Book People.  Both bookstores are happy to send signed books to those who cannot make it to the store.  Bonner also has a list of additional author events at his website.

On to the reviews.  Jonathan Yardley posts a Washington Post book review.

Bonner, who reported on the Elmore case while working as a staff reporter for the New York Times, is a lawyer as well as a journalist and brings professional expertise to the book. He also brings passionate feelings about the proper roles of prosectors and defense attorneys. He came to admire a New Yorker named J. Christopher Jensen, a corporate lawyer “who felt a need to do something more meaningful than help rich people get richer” and helped defend many accused persons in South Carolina. “Jensen never asked himself whether Elmore was guilty or innocent,” Bonner writes. “It was not a question he had to address. For Jensen, like many criminal defense lawyers, in defending a criminal suspect he is defending the integrity of the judicial system and the Constitution, as well as the individual. By demanding that a guilty person have a fair trial, defense lawyers are ensuring that an innocent person will as well.”

As for prosecutors, “a bedrock principle of the American judicial system” is “the duty of the prosecution . . . not to obtain a conviction but to do justice.” Later Bonner writes: “If there is a flaw in the adversarial system of justice that has developed in America, it is that the adversarial nature of it outweighs justice. Prosecutors want to win in trial court. Appellate lawyers want to win on appeal. Justice often gets lost.” From the first prosecutor who went after Elmore to the last, every single one violated that basic rule. The next time you read about justice in America, think twice.

A Boston Globe book review is by Ethan Gilsdorf.

For those seeking more ammunition for their battery of anti-death-penalty arguments, look no further. “Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong’’ is Raymond Bonner’s accomplished and meticulously researched investigation into a murder case that, as the clumsy title suggests, was egregiously bungled.

In 1982, in Greenwood, S.C., Edward Lee Elmore, 23, is accused of killing an elderly widow.

Elmore had occasionally done odd jobs for the victim. When her body is found in her closet, stabbed dozens of times and possibly raped, Elmore is fingered as the prime suspect, despite a notable lack of physical evidence linking him to the crime.

Wilbert Rideau writes the review, "Presumed guilty," for the Financial Times.

America claims to have the best criminal justice system in the world, but in Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, Raymond Bonner reveals how flawed it is for the indigent defendant, especially if he is from a minority or is mentally retarded.

Edward Lee Elmore is both – an African American with an IQ of 61 who was 14 when he dropped out of school in the fifth grade, still reading at second-grade level. Unable to do simple mathematics or tell the time, he earned his living working as a handyman in the affluent white neighbourhoods of Greenwood, South Carolina.

Rideau is the author of the acclaimed memoir, In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance, published in 2010 and noted here.

"On death row, by mistake (or worse)," is the Richmond Times-Dispatch review witten by Doug Childers.

"In many ways, Elmore's is a garden-variety death penalty case: a young black male of limited intelligence convicted of murdering a white person after a trial in which his lawyers' performance was so poor that it could barely be called a defense," writes Bonner, a former investigative reporter and foreign correspondent for The New York Times and a staff writer at The New Yorker.

But it's also exceptional, he adds, because it "raises nearly all the issues that mark the debate about capital punishment: race, mental retardation, bad trial lawyers, prosecutorial misconduct, 'snitch' testimony, DNA testing, a claim of innocence."

As Bonner demonstrates, many of those issues would not have come to light if it hadn't been for the work of a lawyer named Diana Holt, who learned about Elmore's case while she was a law student working for the South Carolina Death Penalty Resource Center.

Holt researched and advocated for Elmore's cause for more than 16 years. The fact that Elmore eventually had his death sentence vacated is, in part, a testament to her doggedness.

Earlier coverage of Bonner's latest book begins at the link.

More Advance Praise for Raymond Bonner's Book

Andrew Cohen posts, "The Book of the Century About the Death Penalty," at the Atlantic.  Here's the beginning:

If you want to better understand why America is slowing turning away from the death penalty, do yourself a favor and read this excerpt from Anatomy of Injustice by Raymond Bonner in the new issue of The Atlantic. The journalist, author, and Atlantic correspondent, has written a masterful book (to be released on February 22) about the application and excesses of state capital punishment regimes. It is as eloquent, important, and accessible an addition to legal scholarship as was Anthony Lewis' first masterpiece, Gideon's Trumpet, two generations ago.
It doesn't matter on which side of the death penalty gulf you reside. If you believe in capital punishment, you ought to read the book to better understand why 100 million or so of your neighbors believe the system is arbitrary and capricious and beneath the dignity of a civilized nation. And if you are opposed to capital punishment, you ought to read the book to understand exactly how and why so many politicians and prosecutors are full of crap when they profess their confidence in the accuracy and reliability of convictions in capital cases.

Anatomy of Injustice focuses upon a single case in South Carolina, in which a black man named Edward Lee Elmore was thrice tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for the murder of an elderly white woman named Dorothy Ely Edwards. She was killed in 1982, and Elmore was first tried just a few months later. And yet, incredibly, just before Thanksgiving of this year, 30 years after the murder, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted Elmore the right to his fourth new trial. He has been in prison all this time, often on death row.

"Having scrutinized volumes of records of Elmore's three trials and his state [post-conviction-relief] proceedings," the sharply-divided federal appeals court ruled on November 22 in a 194-page opinion, "we recognize that there are grave questions about whether it really was Elmore who murdered Mrs. Edwards." In this sentence, we see an essential truth about the failure of capital punishment in America. It's disconcerting enough that the law fails to require the level of certainty that morality demands. What's worse is that even the lower standard goes unmet in a shocking number of capital cases.

Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, will be published by Knopf on February 21.  Earlier coverage of the book is at the link.  Bonner has established a Facebook page for Anatomy of Injustice, and he lists several author events at his website.

It's currently available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and your local, independent bookseller.

Friday

I'll be out of the office much of Friday, attending "Barriers and Innovationas in Civil Rights Litigation Since 9/11: Practical and Theoretical Perspectives." 

The conference is co-sponsored by the William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law and the American Constiution Society Austin and UT Law chapters.

A Profile of Christina Swarns

Today's Washington Post carries, "Defense lawyer fights racism in death row cases."  It's written by Lonnae O’Neal Parker.  Swarns is the LDF as the Director of the Criminal Justice Practice at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, an organization that has been at the forefront of fighting capital punishment.  Here's the beginning:

There’s a steadfast cheeriness to Christina Swarns as she talks rapid fire about the contours of her day. There are the rigors of her end-to-end Manhattan commute, how rarely she dresses like a grown-up and the usual challenges of the professional working mom.

But that changes when the conversation turns to the role of race in the criminal justice system. Then the Howard University grad becomes all authority and passion. She cites case law, death-penalty statistics and the history of Southern lynchings.She talks without pause, punctuating her words with hand gestures, even as her favorite portobello sandwich goes untouched in front of her.

As director of the criminal justice unit at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Swarns, 43, is one of the most prominent capital-defense lawyers in the country — the rare black woman in a community whose public face is most often white and male. Over the course of her career, she’s gotten seven convicted murderers off death row; one was exonerated, three had their convictions overturned and three had their death sentences vacated. But it is her most recent victory that is by far the most high-profile.

In December prosecutors in Philadelphia declined to seek another death sentence against Mumia Abu-Jamal, a decision that took him off death row for the first time in 30 years and rewarded years of effort Swarns — and many others — had put into the case. In 1982, Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer and his decades-long court battles gained him a national and international following. There have been hip-hop tributes, “Free Mumia” T-shirts and a street named for him in France. When it was announced that he would no longer face the death penalty, famed writer Alice Walker wrote him a poem, activist and Princeton University professor Cornel West led a rally at the Philadelphia Constitution Center and the former South African archbishop Desmond Tutu called for his immediate release.

Abu-Jamal is Swarns’s biggest case, and she’s thrilled for the renewed attention it has received. But what she really wants is more scrutiny on an entire system she says is unfair and unjust.

And:

For Swarns and “everybody in the [capital-defense] community,” she says the connection between the death penalty and race is irrefutable. “The death penalty is a direct descendant of lynching,” she says. “The states with the highest number of lynchings also have the highest numbers of death-penalty executions.

Swarns will be one of the participant's at UT Law's program Lynching and the Death Penalty, March 23 & 24.  It's noted, here.  Coverage of Mumia Abu-Jamal's case is also available.

Michael Meltsner's classic book on LDF's involvement in death penalty cases in the 1960's and '70's, Cruel and Unusual: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment, has recently been reissued by Quid Pro Books.  Coverage of Meltsner's book is also available.

Kansas Repeal Legislation

"Tuesday forum to focus on repeal of state’s death penalty law," is Ron Sylvester's Wichita Eagle report.

As a bill to repeal the death penalty languishes in the Statehouse, a local church-women’s group hopes to help revive legislators’ interest on the issue.

The United Methodist Women’s group at College Hill United Methodist Church in Wichita is sponsoring a forum on the death penalty Tuesday. It follows a daylong rally last November at Wichita State University by the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, which said it is seeing similar programs sprouting up across the state.

“The death penalty has reached a point where it’s outdated,” said Jeff Wicks, an attorney with the Kansas Death Penalty Defense Unit and one of Tuesday’s speakers. “It comes from a time when we didn’t have the ability to maintain law and order, as we do now.”

The forum hopes to generate interest in House Bill 2323, which would abolish the death penalty in Kansas in favor of life in prison without the possibility of parole. The bill was introduced last February and remains in the House Committee on Federal and State Affairs.

Rep. Steve Brunk R-Wichita, chairs the committee and said he doesn’t foresee any action on the bill this year.

“We’ve got a lot of issues before us this session, and so far this hasn’t risen to the top 10,” Brunk said. “I just don’t see it gaining a lot of traction in the legislature.”

And:

Death penalty opponents say capital punishment is a budget issue that could save the state millions of dollars. Two studies in the past decade show it costs the state about four times as much to pursue the death penalty as it does to keep someone in prison for life.

“It’s not just the state, but it costs the county, too,” said Donna Schneweis, chair of the board for the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty. “The county bears the brunt of the costs of these prosecutions.”

More on the Kansas cost factor at the link; also, coverage of Kansas repeal legislation in 2010.  Related posts are in the state legislation index.

 here: http://www.kansas.com/2012/01/23/2186507/tuesday-forum-to-focus-on-repeal.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2012/01/23/2186507/tuesday-forum-to-focus-on-repeal.html#storylink=cpy

MA

The New Jim Crow - Now in Trade Paperback

Leonard Pitts' writes, "The new Jim Crow alive and thriving," in his syndicted column.  It's via his home paper, the Miami Herald.

In June of 2010, I wrote in this space about a book, The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, which I called a “troubling and profoundly necessary” work. Alexander promulgated an explosive argument. Namely, that the so-called “War on Drugs” amounts to a war on African-American men and, more to the point, to a racial caste system nearly as restrictive, oppressive and omnipresent as Jim Crow itself.

This because, although white Americans are far and away the nation’s biggest dealers and users of illegal drugs, African Americans are far and away the ones most likely to be jailed for drug crimes. And when they are set “free” after doing their time, black men enter a legal purgatory where the right to vote, work, go to school or rent an apartment can be legally denied. It’s as if George Wallace were still standing in the schoolhouse door.

The New Jim Crow won several awards, enjoyed significant media attention, and was an apparent catalyst in the NAACP’s decision last year to call for an end to the drug war. The book was a sensation, but we need it to be more. We need it to be a movement.

As it happens and not exactly by coincidence, Alexander’s book is being reissued in paperback this week as we mark the birthday of the man who led America’s greatest mass movement for social justice. In his battle against the original Jim Crow, Martin Luther King, in a sense, did what Alexander seeks to do: pour sunlight on an onerous condition that exists just beyond the periphery of most Americans’ sight.

And:

On March 15, Alexander has agreed to appear with me at Books & Books in Coral Gables, where I will moderate a discussion with an audience. You’ll also be able to submit questions via Twitter @MiamiHeraldLive and Facebook. Video from the event will be posted on The Miami Herald’s website.

On Monday, Dave Davies interviewed Michelle Alexander on the WHYY-produced Fresh Air on National Public Radio, "Legal Scholar: Jim Crow Still Exists In America."  There is audio at the link.

Under Jim Crow laws, black Americans were relegated to a subordinate status for decades. Things like literacy tests for voters and laws designed to prevent blacks from serving on juries were commonplace in nearly a dozen Southern states.

In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, legal scholar Michelle Alexander writes that many of the gains of the civil rights movement have been undermined by the mass incarceration of black Americans in the war on drugs. She says that although Jim Crow laws are now off the books, millions of blacks arrested for minor crimes remain marginalized and disfranchised, trapped by a criminal justice system that has forever branded them as felons and denied them basic rights and opportunities that would allow them to become productive, law-abiding citizens.

Related posts are in the books and race indexes.

Lynching and The Death Penalty

That's the title of a symposium at the University of Texas School of Law, set for March 23 & 24, 2012.

The symposium will focus on the historical link between lynching and the death penalty, their similarities and differences, and the enduring role of lynching and race discrimination in contemporary capital litigation.

Keynote address by Bryan Stevenson: Lynching, Racial History and Death Penalty Disqualification.

Presented by: Capital Punishment Center
Sponsor: William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law
Student Organization Sponsor: Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights

More information, including the full program of Lynching and the Death Penalty, is at the link.  It will be held in the Eidman Courtroom at the UT Law.

Friday March 23rd

12:30 – 12:45    Welcoming Remarks

12:45 – 1:15:    Keynote address:  Bryan Stevenson

1:30 – 3:15:      Panel One:  Lynching, a General Historical Perspective
This panel will discuss the practice of lynching in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including its social and political significance, its role in maintaining racial caste, and its connection to other practices (including criminal punishment).

Philip Dray, New York University, Institute for the Humanities
Grace Hale, University of Virginia, Departments of History and American Studies
Amy Louise Wood, Illinois State University, Department of History
George C. Wright, Prairie View A&M University
            Moderator:  William Forbath, University of Texas School of Law

3:15-3:30    Coffee Break

3:30 – 5:00:      Panel Two: The Relationship between Lynching and the Death Penalty during the Lynching Era
This panel will focus on the relationship between lynching and capital punishment during the era of active lynching, including the similarities/dissimilarities of those practices, the extent to which capital punishment and lynching served as “substitutes” for each other, and the connection between lynching reform movements and criminal justice policies.

Carol Steiker, Harvard Law School
Jordan Steiker, University of Texas School of Law
Margaret Vandiver, University of Memphis, Criminology and Criminal Justice
    Moderator:  Cary Franklin, University of Texas School of Law


Saturday March 24th

8:45-10:15:    Panel Three: Lynching’s Legacy and Contemporary Capital Practice
This panel will discuss the extent to which contemporary capital punishment is influenced by, understood through, or reflective of the practice of American lynching.

Sherrilyn Ifill, University of Maryland School of Law
David Oshinsky, University of Texas, Department of History
Rob Owen, University of Texas School of Law
Frank Zimring, University of California Berkeley, School of Law
            Moderator:  Justin Driver, University of Texas School of Law


10:30-12:00:     Panel Four: Lynching and Contemporary Litigation
This panel will examine the continuing role of race discrimination in general and lynching in particular on contemporary American criminal justice, focusing on  the significance of past lynching practices - as an integral part of community histories of racism - in contemporary capital litigation.

Maurie Levin, University of Texas School of Law
Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director, Equal Justice Initiative
Christina Swarns, Director, Criminal Justice Project, NAACP Legal Defense Fund
            Moderator:  Jim Marcus, University of Texas School of Law

Sunny Jacobs

Yesterday's New York Times featured, "Sunny Jacobs and Peter Pringle," in the Weddings/Celebrations Section.  It's written by Vincent M. Mallozzi.

MOST married couples will tell you that the things they hold in common helped cement their relationships. For Sonia Jacobs, 64, and Peter Pringle, 73, married in New York last Sunday, common ground was the decade and a half each had served on death row before their convictions were overturned for the murders that they steadfastly maintained they did not commit.

“We have each lived a nightmare,” Ms. Jacobs, in a gold dress and matching pearls, whispered to a friend minutes before marrying Mr. Pringle, his snow-white beard aglow against the backdrop of a black suit and matching bow tie. “Now it’s time to live our fairy tale.”

Once upon a darker time, Ms. Jacobs and her second husband began serving death sentences for two murders in Florida. She entered solitary confinement inside Broward Correctional Institution as a “28-year-old vegetarian hippie,” she said, and exited prison as “a 45-year-old orphan, widow and grandmother.”

Ms. Jacobs, known as Sunny, was born in Queens. She was living in Los Angeles in 1998 when she first encountered Mr. Pringle in Galway, Ireland, at an Amnesty International event she had spoken at that April.

Mr. Pringle said he remembered being riveted as she reeled out the story of how a February 1976 car trip she had taken with Jesse Tafero, her second husband, landed the couple on death row. Behind the wheel, she said, was Walter Norman Rhodes Jr. (who had befriended Mr. Tafero during an earlier prison stint for both men). He was giving the couple a ride from Miami to the home of friends in West Palm Beach, Fla. Also in the car was Christina, the couple’s 10-month-old daughter and Eric, Ms. Jacobs’s 9-year-old son from her first marriage.

And:

Nearly a year after Ms. Jacobs moved to Ireland, her story, along with those of five other wrongfully convicted death row inmates, became “The Exonerated,” a play put on by the nonprofit theater Culture Project that had its Off Broadway debut in October 2002.

Ms. Jacobs was first portrayed by Jill Clayburgh, and 28 actresses have since played the role of Ms. Jacobs, a list that includes Mia Farrow, Lynn Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, Kathleen Turner, Brooke Shields, Marlo Thomas and Amy Irving.

Texas Indigent Defense Symposium

The newly renamed Texas Indigent Defense Commission, formerly the Task Force, is holding its 2011 Indigent Defense Symposium in the Texas Capitol, today.  It marks 10 years of the Texas Fair Defense Act, passed in the 2001 Texas Legislature.

It includes excellent programming, and it's being live-streamed via the Texas Senate website.  Scroll to the Capitol Extension Auditorium and click to view using Real Player.

Because of the name change I am now adding a Texas Indigent Defense Commission category.  New items involving the agency will be noted with that category.  The Task Force on Indigent Defense category will remain in the index for older entries.

 

Events Roundup

The Texas Book Festival takes over the Capitol complex this weekend in Austin.

Michele Deitch will be moderating a panel at the Texas Book Festival dealing with juvenile justice and the treatment of children and youth in Texas.  The panel features two great authors--Bill Bush, the author of The State of Our Children: Texas as a Parent, on the history of juvenile justice crisis and reform in Texas, and Sherry Matthews, the author of an oral history of the Waco State Home--a children's home for neglected and dependent youth. 

The session is Saturday, October 22nd from 1:30 - 2:30 pm, in the Capitol Extension, Rm. E2.014

Earlier coverage of Michele Deitch's work in juvenile justice is noted at the link. 

Also:

The Trials of Eroy Brown: The Murder Case That Shook the Texas Prison System is Michael Berryhill's book on prison civil rights and the collapse of Jim Crow justice in Texas. He presents Brown's story in his own words, set against the backdrop of the chilling plantation mentality of Texas prisons. Berryhill chairs the journalism program at Texas Southern University.  The program is moderated by Texas Monthly editor Nate Blakeslee.

It's Sunday, October 23rd from 11:00 - 11:45 am in Capitol Extension Room E2.014.

On October 24th in San Antonio, the Catholic Mobilizing Network and the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty  are co-sponsoring a “Religious Leaders Dialogue on the Death Penalty”."

The event, will take place at Trinity University, from 7-9 p.m. in Laurie Auditorium, will be moderated by CMN Executive Director Karen Clifton.

Leaders from the following institutions are confirmed to attend: the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio; Mission Presbytery; the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas; the Evangelical Lutheran Church -  Southwestern Texas Synod; Temple Beth-El; and the United Methodist Southwest Texas Conference.

Related posts are in the books, event, and religion indexes.

Troy Davis Memorial Service - Live Webcast

The NAACP is webcasting today's Celebration of Life for Troy Davis.  It is live, right now from the Jonesville Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia.

More from the NAACP at, "The World Will RememberTroy's Name."

Black, Brown and Invisible: Minorities on Death Row

That's the title of an event in Houston, tonight, at the University of St. Thomas.

Scholars and legal experts join author and former Mexican Consul General of Houston Ricardo Ampudia in a conversation about the impact of the death penalty, particularly on minority defendants.  Topics to be addressed include capital punishment, innocence, disregard of Geneva Conventions and other accords concerning consulates and detained nationals.  A Q&A will be moderated and followed by a book signing.

Participants:
· Ricardo Ampudia is a journalist, diplomat and author of Mexicans on Death Row (Arte Público, 2010), which explores the history and ethics of capital punishment and how it affects the sentencing of Mexicans in the United States.

· Scott J. Atlas, a former litigation partner for the firm Vinson & Elkins (1982 -- 2006), led the legal team that won the release of Ricardo Aldape Guerra, an undocumented immmigrant who spent 14 years on death row.  He was the first Mexican National ever released from Texas' death row.

· Nicole Casarez. attprmeu amd professor at the University of St. Thomas, teaches journalism, media law, public relations and media ethics.  Casarez's affiliation with the Texas Innocence Network has led to investigative work on numerous capital and non-capital cases, including that of exonerated Texas dath row inmate Anthony Graves.

· David R. Dow is the Cullen Professor at the University of Houston Law Center, Rorschach Visiting Professor of History at Rice University and founder of the Texas Innocence Network.  Dow is the author of The Autobiography of an Execution

The book is Mexicans on Death Row by Ricardo Ampudia.

Ricardo Ampudia explores the history and ethics of the death penalty in this fascinating look at its impact on Mexicans sentenced to death in the U.S.  Originally published in Mexico as Mexicanos al grito de muerte, this absorbing account of the history, use and flaws of the death penalty is a must-read for anyone interested in the criminal justice system.

The event is free and open to the public.  For more information, call 713-743-2999.

The event on Twitter is:

#blackbrowndeathrow

Related posts are in the books, event, and foreign citizen index.

An Update of the Iowa Batson Symposium & Baldus Tribute

Oranizers at the University of Iowa College of Law have announced details of an Academic Conference and Tribute Honoring the late David C. Baldus, Joseph B. Tye Professor of Law (1935-2011).  The event will be held Thursday, October 20, prior to the law school's Batson at 25 symposium.

Here's the schedule for the tribue to David Baldus:

Academic Conference
1 p.m.     Welcome: Gail B. Agrawal, Dean and F. Wendell Miller Professor of Law, University of Iowa College of Law
Speaker: The Honorable James E. Baker, United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces

1:20 p.m. First Panel
- Jeffrey A. Fagan, Professor of Law and Epidemiology, Columbia University
- Samuel R. Gross, Thomas and Mabel Long Professor of Law, University of Michigan
- Sheri Lynn Johnson, Professor of Law Cornell University
Moderator: L. Song Richardson, Associate Professor of Law, American University

2:40 p.m. Second Panel
- William J. Bowers, Director, The Capital Jury Project, SUNY Albany
- George Woodworth, Professor Emeritus of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Iowa
- Neil Vidmar, Russell M. Robinson II Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology, Duke University
Moderator: Emily Hughes, Professor and Bouma Fellow in Law, University of Iowa College of Law

Tribute
Levitt Auditorium, Boyd Law Building

4 p.m.     Welcome: Gail B. Agrawal, Dean and F. Wendell Miller Professor of Law, University of Iowa College of Law

Presenters:
- Dr. Lyell Henry, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Mount Mercy University
- George Woodworth, Professor Emeritus of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Iowa
- Catherine Grosso, Associate Professor of Law, Michigan State University
- Marcella David (vocal solo), Professor of Law and Associate Dean for International and Comparative Law Programs, University of Iowa College of Law
- Ann Laquer Estin, Aliber Family Chair, University of Iowa College of Law
 
Reception
5 p.m.     Reception in Boyd Law Building Lobby

Registration is now open for the Batson at Twenty-Five: Perspectives on the Landmark, Reflections on Its Legacy symposium.  It begins the evening of Thursday, October 20, and continues Friday, October 21 in Iowa City.

Earlier coverage of the two related events begins at the link.

Webcast Today

The Constitution Project's Constitution Day program on wrongful convictions will be webcast today, live from Georgetown Law School in Washington, DC.

Annual Celebration of Constitution Day
Fifth Annual Constitutional Commentary Award Presentation and Discussion with the Honorees

Join The Constitution Project, the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, and Georgetown University Law Center as we recognize distinguished authors Jim and Nancy Petro and Brandon Garrett for their respective books, False Justice: Eight Myths that Convict the Innocent  and Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong. In both works, the authors discuss the flaws in our criminal justice system that continue to result in wrongful convictions. The Constitution Project will present the three authors with its Constitutional Commentary Award, given annually to the author or producer of an outstanding work that has improved the quality of public discourse through insightful, articulate analysis of a constitutional issue of the day.  Following the award presentation, Jeffrey Rosen will host a discussion with the three authors.

The webcast will be available here.

WHO:  
Brandon Garrett, Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law, author of Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong

Jim Petro, Former Republican Attorney General of Ohio (2003-2007), and Nancy Petro, co-authors of False Justice: Eight Myths that Convict the Innocent 

Jeffrey Rosen (moderator), Legal Affairs Editor, The New Republic; Professor of Law, George Washington University

WHAT:
Fifth Annual Constitutional Commentary Award Presentation and  discussion with the authors.

WHEN:
Thursday, September 15, 2011 from 3:30-6:30 pm EDT/ 2:30-5:30 pm CDT/ 1:30 pm MDT/ 12:30 pm PDT

WHERE:
Georgetown University School of Law  
Gewirz Student Center, 12th Floor
120 F Street N.W.  
Washington, D.C. 20001

More information at the Constitution Project website.  Earlier coverage of this event is at the link.

ABA Death Penalty Representation Project Turns 25

The American Bar Association's Death Penalty Representation Project will hold its annual event in Washington DC, next month

25th Anniversary & Volunteer Recognition Event
September 14, 2011 | Washington, DC

Honored Guests & Awardees

Justice John Paul Stevens (Ret.)
The Project will honor Justice Stevens' lifetime of work and unwavering dedication to the principle of equal justice for all.

Read Justice Stevens' recent article in the New York Review of Books, "On the Death Sentence."

Death Row Exoneree Anthony Graves
Anthony Graves spent 18 years on death row for a crime he did not commit before being exonerated and released late last year.  Read a detailed account of his fight for freedom, as reported in Texas Monthly.

Congratulations to our 2011 Exceptional Service Award winners!
Arnold & Porter LLP
Dorsey & Whitney LLP
Fredrikson & Byron, P.A.

 
Event Details:
September 14, 2011
6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.

Decatur House
Lafayette Square
1610 H Street NW
Washington, DC

Space is limited, and tickets must be purchased by September 12, 2011
Individual tickets: $100
Sponsorship packages are also available!
To purchase tickets / additional information:

The ABA created the Death Penalty Representation Project in 1986 to help ensure that every person facing a possible death sentence receives a fair trial and has the assistance of a good lawyer.

During the last 25 years the Project has raised awareness about the lack of representation available to death row prisoners, addressed this urgent need by recruiting and training volunteer attorneys, and implemented systemic changes to capital counsel systems. The Project has recruited the country’s top law firms to work on hundreds of pro bono death penalty cases. Our volunteers have contributed skills, more than one million pro bono hours, and many hundreds of thousands of dollars to this cause. They have also saved the lives of countless men and women.

The Project’s annual event celebrates volunteer death penalty attorneys who represent death-sentenced prisoners. Firms and individual volunteers are nominated for exceptional service and honored with our award. Prior award winners include Covington & Burling LLP, Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP, Jenner & Block LLP, Sidley Austin LLP, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, and WilmerHale LLP. A full list of previous award honorees can be found here. Past speakers include Anthony Amsterdam, Wilbert Rideau, CraigWatkins, Steven Bright, Ray Krone, and others.

Last year's event was held in Houston.

Constitution Day - September 15

For Constitution Day, the Constitution Project has put together a great program dealing with wrongful convictions.  The Constitution Project has teamed with the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and Georgetown Law.

Fifth Annual Constitutional Commentary Award Presentation and Discussion with the Authors

Join TCP and the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project on Thursday, September 15, 2011 as we recognize distinguished authors Jim and Nancy Petro and Brandon Garrett for their respective books, False Justice: Eight Myths that Convict the Innocent and Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong. In both works, the authors discuss the flaws in our criminal justice system that continue to result in wrongful convictions. Following the award presentation, Jeffrey Rosen, Legal Affairs Editor for The New Republicand Professor of Law at George Washington University, will host a discussion with the three authors.

The event will take place on the 12th floor of the Gewirz Student Center at Georgetown University School of Law from 3:30-6:30 pm. Be sure to RSVP ([email protected]) to reserve a seat.

More on the participants:

• Brandon Garrett, Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law, author of Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong
• Jim Petro, Former Republican Attorney General of Ohio (2003-2007), and Nancy Petro, co-authors of False Justice: Eight Myths that Convict the Innocent
• Jeffrey Rosen (moderator), Legal Affairs Editor, The New Republic; Professor of Law, George Washington University

The program is open to the public.

There will also be a live webcast of the September 15 program for individuals and groups unable to be in Washington, DC.  The webcast will be archived for later viewing, as well.  I'm hoping that innocence projects in the states and other groups involved in criminal justice reform will consider organizing local screenings of the event.

Earlier coverage of Brandon Garrett's recently published, Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong is at the link.

An Update of the Iowa Batson Symposium

The University of Iowa College of Law has posted additional information on its symposium, "Batson at Twenty-Five: Perspectives on the Landmark, Reflections on Its Legacy.  The registration link, CLE information, and some other elements will be added to the website soon.

The Batson symposium will be held October 20 & 21 in Iowa City, Iowa.

You can view the schedule at the website or in Adobe .pdf format.

A separate panel is being planned to honor the life and work of David Baldus, the late University of Iowa scholar and law professor.

Earlier coverage is at the link.  More on Batson v. Kentucky, via Oyez.

 

Batson at Twenty-Five Symposium - This Fall

Organizers are putting the finishing touches on an important symposium and a tribute to the life and work of David Baldus.  Both will be held October 20th and 21st at the University of Iowa College of Law. 

Final details and a website will be available in the coming weeks.  I will post more information as it becomes available.

This is how the symposium is currently shaping up:

Thursday, October 20, 2011 - Afternoon panel
A panel will be devoted to David Baldus and his work.

Symposium Dinner
"Why Batson Usually Does Not Work" - Stephen Bright

Friday, October 21, 2011 - Symposium
There will be three panels discussing Batson v. Kentucky and its legacy.

James J. Tomkovicz is organizing the Batson symposium.  Eric G. Andersen and Emily Hughes are organizing the Baldus tribute panel.

Originally, David Baldus was to participate in the symposium.  George Woodworth, David Zuckerman Robert Dunham, Catherine Grosso, and Richard Newell are working on the unfinished paper and hope to present it at the symposium.

The papers will appear in a special edition of the Iowa Law Review.

Symposium participants include:

Stephen Bright
Alafair Burke
Robin Charlow
Roger Fairfax
Catherine Grosso
Sheri Lynn Johnson
Nancy Leong
Nancy Marder
Jason Mazzone
Barbara O’Brien
Melynda Price
Dru Stevenson
Andrew Taslitz
Tania Tetlow

More on Batson v. Kentucky, via Oyez.  Earlier coverage of the life and work of David Baldus begins at the link.

I'll be posting additional details as they become available.

A Special Viewing of Incendiary

The Texas Tribune, as part of its Tribune Live Events Series, is holding a special sneak preview of the new documentary film, Incendiary. 

StandDown readers can receive a discount on the ticket price.  Follow the link for more information and to order tickets.  You must use the code SpecialRate to receive the discount.

Here's more from the Trib:

Incendiary tells the true story of Cameron Todd Willingham — who was executed for the 1991 arson murder of his three children — and the scientific, legal and political firestorm that rages today.

The film’s directors, Joe Bailey Jr. and Steve Mims, will introduce the film.

After the screening, the Tribune’s ceo and editor-in-chief, Evan Smith, will host a conversation about the case and its implications for the death penalty in Texas with Sam Bassett, former chairman of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, former Gov. Mark White and the filmmakers. An additional panelist will be announced soon.

July 12, 2011
6 – 10 p.m.
Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum
A cocktail reception will take place from 6 - 7 p.m

$25 for tribune members, $35 for non-members
Click to become a member,

To purchase your ticket, please go to texastribune.org/events or email [email protected].

The Texas Tribune is a non-partisan, non-profit media organization that promotes discourse on vital issues of statewide interest. Our mission is to improve civic engagement in Texas; to serve the journalism community as a source of innovation; and to build the next great public media brand in the United States.

As I've noted before, we are forturnate to have two nonprofit journalism outlet, the Texas Tribune and the Texas Observer, based in Austin.  Both have provided outstanding, enterprise reporting on criminal justice and death penalty issues.  I hope you will join me in supporting both of these outstanding organizations.

All Willingham coverage is available through the Todd Willingham index.

The Beyler report prepared for the Forensic Science Commission is here in Adobe .pdf format.

David Grann's September 2009 New Yorker article is noted here.    Steve Mills and Maurice Possley first reported on the case in a 2004 Chicago Tribune series on junk science.  The December 9, 2004 report was titled,"Man executed on disproved forensics."

The Innocence Project has a Todd Willingham resource page which provides a concise overview of the Willingham case with links to all relevant documents.

A Study of North Carolina Death Sentences

Appalachain State University has issued a news release, "N.C. death penalty review provides data for lawmakers and others."  Here's the complete release:

While North Carolina was once a leading death penalty state, capital punishment has become rare, in part because of an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment in effect for the past five years, pending review of the protocol followed with the lethal injection process.

Appalachian State University professor Matthew Robinson thinks it’s time for lawmakers to consider the effectiveness of the state’s capital punishment system as a deterrent to crime as well as its cost.

Robinson, who teaches in Appalachian’s Department of Government and Justice Studies, is the author of Death Nation: The Experts Explain American Capital Punishment, “Justice Blind? Ideals and Realities of American Criminal Justice” and other books related to crime and the criminal justice system.

Robinson recently compiled a 57-page report titled The Death Penalty in North Carolina: A Summary of the Data and Scientific Studies. The goal was to provide one document that the General Assembly could access if they want to know the facts about the death penalty in North Carolina,” he said of the report. It is available at .

Robinson will join other scholars to discuss the report at a press conference Monday, April 18, at 11 a.m. at the North Carolina Advocates for Justice building at 1312 Annapolis Drive in Raleigh in rooms room CLE 1 and 2.

Robinson’s review of some 24 studies or reports includes information about the cost of executions versus life in prison, and public opinion about the death penalty.

In his report Robinson writes, “Death sentences have declined in North Carolina, executions have been halted, murders have declined, and a large majority of state residents support a moratorium on executions. This is an appropriate time to carefully assess the state’s capital punishment system. A fundamental question for policy-makers to consider is this—is capital punishment a necessary practice for North Carolina?”

He said lawmakers should consider if the death penalty meets its goals or providing closure for victims, retribution to society, deterrence from murder, and reduced murder rate. “Is capital punishment something that we believe is a necessary policy. Is it something we need to keep doing,” Robinson asked? “And do the benefits the state and society might realize from death penalty outweigh its costs?”

According to N.C. Department of Corrections data, currently 158 prisoners are on death row. The most recent incarceration was in March, the oldest was in 1985. Since 1977, only 9.9 percent of people sentenced to death in the state have been executed.

According to a report published by Duke University’s School of Public Policy, it costs the state $2.16 million more for a death sentence case than a trial that leads to life in prison or a lengthy prison sentence when considering the cost of a trial, legal defense, appeals and incarceration.

“We are spending an enormous amount of money for a system we rarely use and that studies show has significant racial biases,” Robinson said.

As linked above, The Death Penalty in North Carolina: A Summary of the Data and Scientific Studies, is available in Adobe .pdf format.

The most recent coverage from North Carolina focuses on the Racial Justice Act.

New Documentary Premieres at SxSW Film - Incendiary

"The Case That Wouldn't Stay Closed," is the title of Jordan Smith's article in the Austin Chronicle.  Here's an extended excerpt from the beginning:

The case of Cameron Todd Willingham, tried and executed for a 1991 fire in Corsicana, Texas, that claimed the lives of his three young children, has been a long and circuitous one, full of political intrigue, scientific inquiry, and sadness. The story is not yet finished: Over the past four years it has actually heated up to a near fever pitch, starting when lawyers with the Innocence Project requested the nascent Texas Forensic Science Commission reinvestigate the case to determine whether the arson science used to convict Willingham was outdated and inaccurate. When the panel was on the eve of questioning fire scientists about that issue in 2009, Gov. Rick Perry quickly shuffled the panel, taking off several well-respected members – including the group-selected chair, attorney Sam Bassett, and replacing him with a hand-picked chair, Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley, a man not known for his even-handedness.

We sat down with Austin filmmakers Steve Mims and Joe Bailey Jr. for a chat about making Incendiary: The Willingham Case, which explores at length the case that has sparked debate about the use of junk science in criminal cases, brought up issues about Perry's duty to carefully review death cases, and raised questions about whether a local judge can hear evidence that may open the door to having Willingham declared innocent. It's a story still far from having its final chapter written.

---

Austin Chronicle: This is such a huge case – it's been going on since 1991, basically – and it's still kind of a moving target. How do you go about conceiving of this big story?

Joe Bailey Jr.: I guess the thing we always go back to, the thing we were most intrigued by, is the way that the science and the politics and the legal understanding were all kind of woven into the story. ... And we were really lucky in a sense to come to the project right when [Perry's panel shuffle] happened – that was just provenance. I don't really know how that happened. But that was really just a gift from the governor. [laughs]

AC: Is there anybody that you wanted to interview that you didn't get to interview?

Bailey: Yeah, well, I mean of course. It was a really sensitive time for the governor.

AC: That's putting it mildly.

Bailey: I did contact his press office. And I might've been more oblique than I should have, because I was hoping there was some chance of something. And it wasn't going to be a confrontational-type thing; I wasn't going to blindside him; I just wanted a chance – I think I was just really naive starting out. ... Even after law school, you would think I would've come out a hardened cynic, but I hadn't.

AC: In what way?

Bailey: I felt like the governor had to understand his duty and how important his job is as a fail-safe in that system. And I don't think that he did. And in his defense, I think that most people who are lawyers don't understand how the Texas system relies upon the governor so heavily in that respect. Because the fact-finder, the jury, once they make up their mind about that evidence, the appeals court [doesn't] look at that evidence again. And the governor ... took the position that, well, the courts have all looked at this. So it's fine. And that's a real problem.

Steve Mims: It's a real problem. The Innocence Project [has identified] 750 people in Texas who are in jail for arson, and there may be a lot of them who are guilty, but there are probably some of them who are not and were convicted on the same [kind of] evidence. And they've offered to help – to go methodically through all of those cases and say, "These are worthy of taking another look; these aren't."

Smith has posted more of the interview online, "sxswf: Even More 'Incendiary'."

"Texas-related SXSW films 'Incendiary' & 'Better This World' probe high-profile cases," is the report in today's Austin American-Statesman.  It's by Charles Ealy.

Amid dozens of powerhouse documentaries, two stand out at this year's South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival, which starts today. And both of them "Incendiary" and "Better This World" raise questions about two high-profile legal cases involving Texans.

"Incendiary," directed by Austin's Steve Mims and Joe Bailey Jr., explores the science behind the arson investigation that led to the conviction and eventual execution of Cameron Todd Willingham in 2004. It also looks at the increasing controversy over the Texas Forensic Science Commission, where disputes about the Willingham case have erupted.

And:

Steve Mims, a documentary filmmaker and lecturer at the University of Texas, was teaching a class in 2009 when a discussion began about a New Yorker article titled "Trial by Fire." The article basically asked whether Texas had executed an innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham, in 2004, for a 1991 fire that killed his three Corsicana children.

Among Mims' students was Joe Bailey Jr., a law school student and an aspiring filmmaker.

"Afterward, Joe wrote me in an e-mail that someone should make a film about the case," Mims says. "I e-mailed him back, and at first I said this would be a whole lot of work. But by the end of the e-mail, I was saying 'Let's do it.' "

Mims and Bailey say that they see the case as raising serious questions about the legal system, especially since jurors and citizens believe that the evidence of arson in a murder case will be scientifically based.

Earlier coverage of Incendiary is at the link.  The Willingham case was also the subject of a Frontline documentary, Death by Fire; more on the Frontline report, at the link.

More on SxSW, Austin's renowned music, film, and interactive festival, at the link.  It begins today.

Earlier coverage of the case begins at the link.

All Willingham coverage is available through the Todd Willingham index.

The Beyler report prepared for the Forensic Science Commission is here in Adobe .pdf format.

David Grann's September 2009 New Yorker article is noted here.    Steve Mills and Maurice Possley first reported on the case in a 2004 Chicago Tribune series on junk science.  The December 9, 2004 report was titled,"Man executed on disproved forensics."

The Innocence Project has a Todd Willingham resource page which provides a concise overview of the Willingham case with links to all relevant documents.

Barbara Jordan Freedom Foundation Program Next Week

The annual Barbara Jordan Forum  kicks off next week with an keynote by State Senator Rodney Ellis, and contains some excellent criminal justice programming. 

Details are in the news release, "Weeklong Tribute to Honor Life and Work of Barbara Jordan Feb 21-25.
LBJ School of Public Affairs Joins with The Barbara Jordan Freedom Foundation to Commemorate Jordan’s Landmark 75th Birthday."

Events are free and open to the public, but you must register to attend Senator Rodney Ellis' Keynote Opening Day’s Symposium.  All events are at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.

Discussions of particular items to readers in the Austin area on Monday:

1:15 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.  – “Reducing Risk and Building Strength Through Educational Reform and Early Childhood Interventions”
Roundtable discussion with:
Dr. Gregory Vincent, UT Vice-President for Diversity and Community Engagement
Prof. Norma Cantu, UT College of Education and School of Law
Kara Johnson, Texas Early Childhood Education Coalition
Prof. Julian Heilig, UT College of Education
Dr. Lynda Frost, Hogg Foundation for Mental Health

2:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. – “The Need for Juvenile Justice Reform”
Lead Speaker: Shay Bilchik, former head of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and Executive Director, Georgetown University’s Center for Juvenile Justice Reform

Responders:
Vicki Spriggs, Executive Director, Texas Juvenile Probation Commission
Senior District Judge Jeanne Meurer, Travis County juvenile judge
Prof. David Springer, UT School of Social Work

4:15 p.m. – 5:45 p.m. – “Mass Incarceration, Race, and Criminal Justice Reform”
Lead Speaker: Marc Mauer, Executive Director, The Sentencing Project

Responders:
Steve Martin, Attorney and Corrections Consultant; author of “Texas Prisons: The Walls Came Tumbling Down”
District Judge John Creuzot, Dallas County criminal judge (invited)
Ana Yanez Correa, Executive Director, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition
Prof. Michele Deitch, LBJ School of Public Affairs

On Friday, February 25:

12:15 – 2:15 p.m.--“From Time Out to Hard Time: Young Children in the Adult Criminal Justice System” featuring Prof. Michele Deitch
Sponsored by the Center for Health and Social Policy (CHASP) and Social, Health, Economic, and Education Policymakers (SHEP)
SRH 3.122
Bass Lecture Hall

The Center for Health and Social Policy and SHEP present LBJ School Senior Lecturer Michele Deitch, a Board member of the Barbara Jordan Freedom Foundation and an expert on juvenile justice and criminal justice policy.  She will discuss the prevalence and implications of trying juveniles as adults and incarcerating them in adult prisons and jails.

Related posts can be found in the juvenile index; earlier items from Michele Deitch, at the link.

A New Play Looks at Capital Punishment

Today's New York Times carries, "A Playwright Whose Time Seems to Be Now."  It's written by Reeves Wiedeman.

Writing a play about the death penalty should put you squarely in the middle of a moral debate. Yet Nathan Louis Jackson, whose “When I Come to Die” traces the emotional turmoil of an inmate whose execution goes mysteriously awry, insists that his play is not political and that it takes no sides.

“I have a weird thing about killing folks,” the 32-year-old Mr. Jackson said. “That being said, if somebody did something to my wife or my daughter, I might say, ‘I don’t care what you do to him, as long as I never see him again.’ “

But his play, which opens on Thursday night, and is Mr. Jackson’s second Lincoln Center Theater production, may frustrate viewers who want a polemic. And that’s just fine with its author.

“You’ll have people who come to the show and say, ‘Let’s see if he’s for this, or against this,’ “ Mr. Jackson said. “Some people aren’t going to like that I don’t make a statement.”

His shoulder-length dreadlocks cuffed tightly behind his head, Mr. Jackson watched from the last row of the Duke, on 42nd Street, where LCT3 is putting on the show through Feb. 26, while the actors onstage ran through a scene in which an inmate rehearses his last words: “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining me on the day that I am to die.”

Chris Chalk (“Fences”) plays Damon, who is forced to wonder what to do with his suddenly extended life when a scheduled lethal injection doesn’t come off. He consults a priest (Neil Huff) and counsels a fellow inmate (David Patrick Kelly) while facing the uncertainty of whether he will face execution again, and when.

“Fascination with time” — and not the death penalty — Mr. Jackson said, is what got him going on the play, his second on a New York stage after “Broke-ology,” which was performed in 2009 at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. (It was directed by Thomas Kail, as is the new play.) Imagine Stephen Hawking and not “Dead Man Walking,” as a key influence.

“I started thinking about people in weird time positions, and these cats know exactly how much time they have left on this earth,” Mr. Jackson explained. “But what happens if you get more of it?”

He set the story in Indiana, where 20 men have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977, rather than in Texas, whose 464 executions since 1982 have made it a political lightning rod. Yet Mr. Jackson still wanted to portray life on death row accurately. He researched the proper way to apply handcuffs; went on a prison tour with his mother-in-law, a former guard; and spoke with a cousin who had a son in prison. He also admits that his premise was improbable, though not impossible: executions are rarely botched.

Playbill has, "When I Come to Die, About a Spared Death Row Inmate, Opens Off-Broadway Feb. 10," by Adam Hetrick.

A death row inmate is granted an unlikely second chance in the world premiere of Nathan Louis Jackson's When I Come to Die, which officially opens Off-Broadway Feb. 10 after previews that began Jan. 31.

LCT3 presents the play about an inmate who survives a lethal injection, which is directed by Tony Award-nominated director Thomas Kail (In the Heights, Lombardi). Performances will continue through Feb. 26 at the Duke on 42nd Street.

When I Come to Die reunites playwright Jackson and director Kail. The two collaborated on the world premiere of Broke-ology at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and for LCT in 2009.

Chris Chalk (Fences) is cast as Damon Robinson, the inmate who gets a second chance, in a cast that also features Michael Balderrama (In the Heights), Neal Huff (Take Me Out), David Patrick Kelly (Festen) and Amanda Mason Warren (The Golden Age).

According to LCT3, "When I Come to Die tells the tale of Damon Robinson, a death-row inmate, who struggles to find faith and hope and understand why his life has been spared after he survives a lethal injection."

And from the New Yorker:

Thomas Kail directs a new drama by Nathan Louis Jackson (“Broke-ology”), set in an Indiana prison, about a death-row inmate whose execution is botched. An LCT3 production. In previews. Opens Feb. 10. (The Duke on 42nd Street, 229 W. 42nd St. 646-223-3010.)

A Meeting of Houston Religious Leaders

"Houston religious leaders pledge to fight death penalty," is the title of Jeannie Kever's report in today's Houston Chronicle.

Seven of Houston's best-known religious leaders publicly pledged to fight the death penalty Tuesday night, saying it damages the society it seeks to protect.

"When an execution happens, who dies?" asked the Rev. Mike Cole, General Presbyter of the New Covenant Presbytery. "All of us."

Several other speakers called for the abolition of the death penalty in Texas, drawing applause from a packed auditorium at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts.

The discussion was scheduled to coincide with the Houston Grand Opera's production of Dead Man Walking, which opens Saturday. It is based upon Sister Helen Prejean's book, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States.

Prejean, who served as moderator, has been a leading opponent of the death penalty since before her book was published in 1994. It became an Oscar-winning movie before it was turned into an opera, but she said getting other religious leaders to speak out has been more difficult.

"The silence has been deafening," she said in an interview before the panel discussion. "It's taken years and years to get them to be active. The idea that someone could be Christian and for the death penalty, it's the very opposite of what Jesus stood for."
Not new to the fight

But many of the leaders said they have long been involved in the fight.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, leader of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, described touring the death chamber in Huntsville after leading an anti-abortion march through the city.

"There was an unmistakeable feeling of coldness, of everything that is opposed to the dignity of the human person, even a guilty person," he said.

Other panelists were Bishop Janice Riggle Huie of the Texas United Methodist Church Conference; Rabbi David Lyon, senior pastor of Congregation Beth Israel; Bishop Mike Rinehart of the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church; the Rev. Harvey Clemons Jr., pastor of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church; and the Rev. Daniel Melendez, director of Pastors in Action.

And:

Several speakers talked about the advances in scientific and investigative techniques that have led to the exoneration of people previously found guilty.

Rinehart mentioned the case of Anthony Graves, recently freed after 18 years on death row.

"That should be as offensive to us as the original crime," he said. "The state just gets it wrong too often."

Prejean said she hopes the event will be just the beginning of a renewed focus by religious leaders on the death penalty.

"It's controversial, and it's hard to pick up as a religious leader," she said. "The hope is that those who stand publicly will also give a much more serious effort to educating the people in the pews."

Earlier notice of the event is at the post, "Next Week in Houston."

The Houston Grand Opera performances of Dead Man Walking begin this weekend.

The Houston Press reports, "Joyce DiDonato Plays Sister Helen Prejean in HGO's Dead Man Walking."  It's written by Margaret Downing.

Next Week in Houston

"Houston Death Penalty Dialogue to Feature Sister Helen Prejean," is the title of a news release announcing the program, "The Death Penalty: A Dialogue of Religious Leaders."  The program is organized by the Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Use of the Death Penalty.

Sister Helen Prejean, the influential author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States, will moderate a panel of Houston’s most important religious leaders in a discussion entitled “The Death Penalty:  A Dialogue of Religious Leaders” on Tuesday, January 18, 2011 at 7:30 p.m., at the Hobby Center, Zilkha Hall, located at 800 Bagby. The event is free and open to the public.

Prejean, a former teacher, joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille at a young age and soon after dedicated her life to the poor of New Orleans. She began a prison ministry in 1981 and became a pen pal and spiritual advisor to many convicted felons.  This led her to share her experiences with America through publication of her memoir Dead Man Walking in 1993. Since then, Prejean has become a powerful presence in the fight against the death penalty in the United States.

Panelists will include Vicki Schieber, Chair of the Board of Directors of Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, who has been outspoken in her opposition to the death penalty since her daughter, Shannon, was raped and murdered in 1998.

Schieber will be joined on the panel by some of Houston’s most prestigious religious leaders: Cardinal Daniel DiNardo (Catholic Diocese of Galveston-Houston); Bishop Janice Huie (Texas UMC Conference); Bishop Rinehart (Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church); Reverend Mike Cole (General Presbyter of New Covenant Presbytery); Reverend Harvey Clemons, Jr. (Pastor, Pleasant Hill Baptist Church); Rabbi David Lyon (Senior Rabbi at Congregation Beth Israel); and Pastor Daniel Melendez (Director, Pastors in Action).    

“Dead Man Walking” became a major motion picture in 1995 and garnered several Academy Award nominations.  The story subsequently became an opera by the acclaimed American composer, Jake Heggie, with a libretto by the Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally.   The Religious Leaders Dialogue on January 18 will begin with an aria from the opera, sung by mezzo-soprano Catherine Martin, with Heggie accompanying. 

The Houston Grand Opera will present five performances of “Dead Man Walking,” opening on January 22, 2011 and running through February 6.  More information on the opera is at:

“The Death Penalty: A Dialogue of Religious Leaders” at the Hobby Center is free and open to the public with a confirmed RSVP.  Seating is limited.

To RSVP, call 512.441.1808, email [email protected], or visit the website.

The program is co-sponsored by:

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston
Dominican Sisters of Houston
5th Ward Coalition of Churches
Pleasant Hill Baptist Church
The StandDown Texas Project
Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

Judge Sarokin on False Confessions - Norfolk Four, Tonight on Frontline

Retired Federal Judge H. Lee Sarokin posts, "Why Do Innocent People Confess to Crimes They Did Not Commit?," at Huffington Post.

The answer all too often is coercion, intimidation, deceit and trickery. All of those techniques were employed to obtain the conviction of four innocent sailors for the rape and murder of a woman in Norfolk, Virginia. Danial Williams after only 11 days of marriage was arrested and charged with the crime. After relentless questioning and threats for 11 hours, he confessed. When the confession did not fit the actual facts, he was again questioned and convinced to alter his confession to jibe with those facts.

Because Williams' DNA failed to match any at the crime scene, the police next interrogated his roommate, Joe Dick. Subjected to the same harassment, Dick likewise confessed. For reasons too complicated to recount here, a total of eight men were charged with the gang rape and murder of Michelle Bosko, including two other sailors, Eric Wilson and Derek Tice.

And:

In the 261 exonerations based upon DNA evidence, clear evidence of innocence, approximately 20 percent of the convictions set aside were based upon false confessions. There is no more powerful evidence in a criminal trial than a confession by the defendant himself. There is no greater injustice than when those confessions are obtained through threats and intimidation and result in the conviction of innocent persons.

A reminder that PBS Frontline tonight examines the Norfolk Four in, "The Confessions."  Earlier coverage begins here.

PBS Frontline to Examine Norfolk Four Case

The PBS documentary, which premiered this season with an examination of the Todd Willingham case, takes up another controversial case, that of the Norfolk Four in Virginia.

Tomorrow night's program is, "The Confessions."  Check your local PBS affiliate for the time in your locale.

Why would four innocent men confess to a brutal crime they didn’t commit? FRONTLINE producer Ofra Bikel (Innocence Lost, An Ordinary Crime) investigates the conviction of four Navy sailors for the rape and murder of a Norfolk, Va., woman in 1997. In interviews with the sailors, Bikel learns of some of the high-pressure police interrogation techniques -- including the threat of the death penalty, sleep deprivation, and intimidation -- that led each of the “Norfolk Four” to confess, despite a lack of evidence linking them to the crime. All four sailors are now out of prison -- one served his sentence and the other three were granted conditional pardons last summer -- but the men were not exonerated as felons or sex offenders. The case raises disturbing questions about the actions of the police and prosecutors, who relied on the sailors’ often contradictory confessions for their convictions, and disregarded DNA evidence that pointed to a lone assailant who would later confess to the crime himself while serving prison time for another rape.

On Saturday, the New York Times reported, "Officer’s Extortion Conviction Prompts Calls for Full Exoneration of ‘Norfolk Four’," by Sabrina Tavernise.

The recent conviction of a Virginia police officer supports the case for full exoneration of the “Norfolk Four,” former sailors convicted of rape and murder, who received conditional pardons from Virginia’s governor last year, lawyers for the men said.

In legal briefs filed in Virginia this week, the lawyers argued that last week’s conviction of Robert Glenn Ford, a police officer in Norfolk, Va., and the main investigator in the case of the Norfolk Four, raises new evidence showing the men were wrongly convicted. The men received partial pardons in 2009, but their convictions still stand, and the lawyers argue that they should now be overturned.

The men were convicted in the 1997 murder case of Michelle Moore-Bosko in Norfolk. None of the four sailors had prior criminal records, and the case against them was based almost entirely on confessions they gave to Mr. Ford, who pursued the investigation despite DNA evidence linking the crime to another man, Omar Ballard.

But Mr. Ford’s conviction — for extortion and lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation — covered a period that began in 2003, long after the Norfolk Four were convicted, and in a letter last month, Judge Everett A. Martin Jr., expressed skepticism that the conviction was relevant for the Norfolk Four case.

But Donald P. Salzman, a lawyer for Danial J. Williams, one of the former sailors, argued in a response filed this week that Mr. Ford’s indictment and conviction was new information that substantially changed the facts of his client’s case.

Specifically, Mr. Salzman said, a source has come forward asserting that Mr. Ford had stated he believed the men were not guilty of the crime. But in Mr. Salzman’s view, Mr. Ford did not back off the case because he was trying to protect his position. Earlier in his career, Mr. Salzman said, Mr. Ford was caught in what prosecutors said was an effort to elicit false confessions from juveniles, and Mr. Salzman argued that another instance could have endangered his job.

“A detective who was the driving force behind these convictions has now been convicted for manipulating the justice system,” said Mr. Salzman, of the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. “He had a motive to continue to pursue these cases.”

Margaret Edds posts, "The crumbling case against the 'Norfolk Four'," the Voices blog of the Washington Post.

A “PBS Frontline” documentary on the Norfolk Four case, scheduled to air Tuesday, makes it chillingly clear that the concept of multiple false confessions is no more preposterous than Ford’s and the prosecutors’ ever-shifting theory of the case.

Initially satisfied with one confession, police backtracked after the first DNA test failed to match evidence. Over time, faced with one disappointing DNA result after another, Ford extracted more and more confessions and more and more names of purported co-conspirators. Eventually, seven men, including two with solid alibis, stood implicated.

No evidence existed against any of them, save the confessions.

Then, out of the blue, an eighth man serving time for rape, also confessed. Omar Ballard, who did not know the others, was the only suspect without ties to the armed services, the only one with a history of attacking women, the only one who knew precisely how the crime occurred, and the only one whose DNA fit.

As he tells “Frontline”: “I alone committed the murders. . . . No one ever had anything to say or do with the case besides me.”

By the time Ballard appeared, police and prosecutors were too invested to admit their mistake. They simply inserted Ballard into a ludicrous, eight-man conspiracy. Aside from Ballard, now serving a life sentence, the three men conditionally pardoned by Kaine each served about 11 years of life sentences; the fourth man, Wilson, was convicted of rape only and had completed an 8½-year sentence at the time of the partial pardons.

As registered sex offenders, all four live in a hellish limbo, dictated by the laws of their individual states. In Michigan, Williams wears an electronic ankle bracelet 24 hours a day. He cannot even work in the yard without permission. In Texas, Wilson was denied admission to a school for electricians and cannot adopt his wife’s son because of his criminal record. In North Carolina, Tice washes windows for a living, his dream of becoming a nurse forever barred. And in Maryland, Dick fears taking his parents’ dogs for a walk because a school backs up to their property.

The Virginian-Pilot reports, "'Frontline' show dissects case of the Norfolk Four," by Tim McGlone.

Frontline producers also obtained, for the first time publicly, an interview with Ballard. He told Frontline that police pressured him to say the other men participated in the crime with him, a statement that he said was not true.

"It was made clear from the jump that unless I said somebody else was with me, that it wasn't going to be the truth," Ballard said. "The only truth they wanted to hear (was) that I did it with someone else."

The recent corruption conviction in federal court here of retired Norfolk Detective Robert Glenn Ford is also part of the show.

The Norfolk Four lawyers said the guilty verdict in the Ford case is directly relevant to the innocence claims the men have pending.

Federal authorities here have said they do not believe there is a link between Ford's corruption case and his history of obtaining a number of false confessions.

The Norfolk Four case has already been written about in a book called "The Wrong Guys." Popular author John Grisham is also working on a screenplay about the case.

Earlier coverage of the Norfolk Four, begins at the link; related posts are in the documentary and false confessions index.

Elie Wiesel: The Death Penalty and Human Dignity

That was the title of the Nobel Laureate's speech at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, last night.

The Day reports, "For Elie Wiesel, death penalty is not the answer." It's written by Karen Florin.

Dr. William Petit did not attend Elie Wiesel's lecture on capital punishment at Wesleyan University Tuesday, but for a few minutes the Nazi death camp survivor spoke as if the man who lost his wife and daughters in the Cheshire home invasion was his only audience.

"Your wound is open," Wiesel said. "It will remain. You are mourning, and how can I not feel the pain of your mourning? But death is not the answer."

The 82-year-old Nobel Peace laureate, author and human rights activist said that if the death penalty could bring back the victims, maybe he would change his stance. He did allow that murderers should be punished more harshly than other prisoners.

"They should get hard labor," he said.

"Death is not the answer" became the refrain for Wiesel as he wondered aloud what could be done to help survivors of violent crimes "so that families will not feel cheated by the law."

The Romanian native spoke with authority, having lost both parents and a sister in the Nazi death camps. He escaped Buchenwald in April 1945 when it was liberated by soldiers from the U.S. Army's Sixth Armored Division.

"I know," he said. "I know the pain of those who survive. Believe me, I know."

Wiesel spoke in the university's Memorial Chapel, which was packed with about 400 students, professors and invited guests. In simple, lyrical language that carried the lilt of his Eastern European beginnings, he defended his anti-death position using stories from the past.

In the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, the two sons of Adam, Cain is said to have asked God, after he had killed his brother and God wondered about Abel's whereabouts, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

"I think it wanted to teach us that whoever kills, kills his brother," Wiesel said.

"Elie Wiesel speaks about death penalty at Wesleyan," is the title of Julie Anne Rancourt's report in today's Middletown Press.

Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel delivered a lecture on the use of capital punishment in an ethical society to students, faculty, alumni and the public Tuesday evening at Wesleyan University.

The program, which was initially going to focus solely on building an ethical society, was altered to include Wiesel’s first ever detailed address of the use of the death penalty in this country.

And:

It is in part because of those experiences as a youth during the war that Wiesel does not believe that society should act as the angel of death. He believes in harsher punishment, such as hard labor for prisoners, but “we should not be the servants of death”.

Earlier in the day, while addressing the media, Wiesel spoke about the Cheshire home invasion case and ongoing trial.

“It would be almost obscene for me to comment about morality to the father (who survived)," Wiesel said. "I would only ask, do you really think that death could bring them back to life? It is not easy, but a civilized society needs to face such challenges. That father deserves a different language. We must find the words, the proper words, to deal with it.”

Recalling that his passion for his studies after surviving the war saved his sanity, Wiesel said that education is the key to building a moral society, and got a chuckle out of the audience which included Wesleyan President Michael Roth and his family when he said that teachers salaries should be raised to show our respect for them and their work.

“Remember what you’ve learned here, and remember that the answer is always in your hands,” Wiesel told the students.

Thanks to Ron Tabak for distributing.  I'm hoping that Elie Wiesel's entire remarks will be posted on his web site.

Reminder - PBS Frontline Tonight

The Frontline episode, "Death by Fire," airs tonight at 8:00 pm (CDT), 9:00 pm (EDT.)  Check your local listings, as they say.

The New York Times has a review, "Questioning the Guilt of an Executed Father," by Mike Hale.

The report, “Death by Fire,” on Tuesday night is polished, persuasive and restrained — hallmarks of the “Frontline” ethos. The graphics don’t drip blood; an anchor didn’t parachute in at the last minute to stand in front of a prison and read a few overheated lines. It’s tasteful muckraking. That might sound like faint praise, but in the current news climate, it’s one way to stand out.

“Death by Fire” is also well timed, in one sense: A Texas judge convened a hearing last week to examine whether the program’s subject, Cameron Todd Willingham, was wrongly convicted of murder in the 1991 fire in Corsicana, Tex., that killed his three daughters — and whether, therefore, Texas had killed an innocent man. On Thursday a state court of appeals granted a county prosecutor’s motion to stop the proceedings temporarily.

The stir created by the largely symbolic hearing confirms one of the points made in “Death by Fire,” which is that the central question in the Willingham case — Did he set the fire that consumed his house, or did it start accidentally? — has been overtaken by Texas politics, the emotions surrounding the death penalty and the pride of Corsicana, a small city in the oil fields south of Dallas.

In another sense, the program feels a little past the curve, coming a year after David Grann’s Polk Award-winning article in The New Yorker, “Trial by Fire,” put the Willingham case and its implications for the death penalty in the national spotlight. But this television account gives faces and voices to the key players on both sides.

Strictly speaking, the case is a battle about forensics, pitting local fire and police officials who decided on arson (using 1991 fire investigation methods) against a phalanx of outside experts who looked at the evidence years later and agreed that the fire was accidental and that Mr. Willingham was innocent.

At the Texas Tribune, Morgan Smith writes, "Frontline Season Premiere Features Willingham Case."

Two weeks before the gubernatorial election, the season premiere of PBS Frontline features a timely topic: the Cameron Todd Willingham case — and despite initial hesitation, all public broadcasting stations in Texas will air it. 

When Texas PBS stations originally learned the episode of the nationally syndicated show would run so close to Election Day, some expressed concern over how the public might perceive the decision to show the hour-long documentary on the highly controversial case, which raises the question of whether Texas executed an innocent man, according to Bill Moll, the general manager of San Antonio's KLRN. But after reviewing and discussing its content with Frontline producers, Moll said: "We felt that there was no motive that has anything to do with the election; it just kind of hits where it hits."

David Barron writes, "Frontline takes aim at hot-button issues," for the Houston Chronicle.

The documentary series opens its 28th season at 8 tonight with Death by Fire, which details the politically charged prosecution, conviction and execution of Cameron Todd Willingham. The Corsicana man was executed in 2004 for the death of his three daughters in a 1991 fire that originally was said to be arson but whose origin is now in dispute.

Tonight's show comes as the Texas Forensic Science Commission is in the midst of its investigation into questions about the integrity of the scientific evidence used by prosecutors against Willingham. Hearings are scheduled to continue into November, but Frontline producer David Fanning and his staff spent last week prepared to edit Death by Fire if circumstances warranted.

"You're always trying to be on the tip of the news curve," he said. "We were waiting to make changes if needed."

The Willingham case is one of several forensic crime stories on Frontline's agenda. An August episode focused on misconduct by New Orleans police after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and at least two shows similar to Death by Fire are planned later this season, Fanning said.

Earlier coverage begins here.  All Willingham coverage is available through the Todd Willingham category index.

The Beyler report prepared for the Forensic Science Commission is here in Adobe .pdf format.

David Grann's September 2009 New Yorker article is noted here.    Steve Mills and Maurice Possley first reported on the case in a 2004 Chicago Tribune series on junk science.  The December 9, 2004 report was titled,"Man executed on disproved forensics."

The Innocence Project has a Todd Willingham resource page which provides a concise overview of the Willingham case with links to all relevant documents.

PBS Frontline to Spotlight Willingham Case

The season premiere of Frontline is tomorrow night,"Death by Fire."

The documentary will broadcast Tuesday, October 19th at 9 pm (EDT) / 8 pm (CDT.) 

"Did Texas execute an innocent man?," is the press release.

Several controversial death penalty cases are currently under examination in Texas and in other states, but it’s the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham -- convicted for the arson deaths of his three young children -- that’s now at the center of the national debate.

In Death by Fire, FRONTLINE’s season premiere, airing Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings), FRONTLINE gains unique access to those closest to the Willingham case -- meticulously examining the evidence used to convict Willingham, offering an in-depth portrait of those most impacted by the case, and exploring the explosive implications of the execution of a possibly innocent man.

“The state of Texas executed a man for a crime that they couldn’t prove was really a crime,” nationally renowned fire scientist John Lentini tells FRONTLINE.

The re-examination of the case turns on a critical finding that came only weeks before Willingham’s scheduled execution: The investigators who had determined that Willingham had set the fire that killed his three daughters had relied on an outdated understanding of arson evidence. “Todd Willingham’s case falls into that category where there is not one iota of evidence that the fire was arson,” forensic scientist Gerald Hurst tells FRONTLINE of the results of his review of the evidence. “Fundamentally, this was a classic accidental fire.”

But even with a central pillar of the state’s case against Willingham in doubt, Texas Gov. Rick Perry refused to delay Willingham’s execution. Last year a report commissioned by the Texas Forensic Science Commission backed up the findings of Dr. Hurst, finding that the arson evidence against Willingham did not have “any basis in modern fire science.” Perry publicly defended his handling of the case and quickly replaced the commission’s chairman, Sam Bassett.

“If we make a mistake, are we going to learn from it?” Bassett asks FRONTLINE. “Or are we going to try to sweep it under the rug and act like nothing happened?”

Experts tell FRONTLINE there could be hundreds of innocent people in prison for arson cases where the evidence was misinterpreted by investigators. But not everyone is convinced that Willingham was innocent. Despite the evidence the fire was not an arson, in the town of Corsicana, Tex., where the deaths occurred, many say Willingham was guilty. Even Willingham’s own defense attorney, David Martin, still insists his client started the deadly fire. “Of course I thought he was guilty,” Martin says. “The real fact of the matter is that Willingham was guilty. He wasn't innocent. He really set that fire and killed those kids.”

Through interviews with Willingham’s friends and family, FRONTLINE tells the story of a troubled young man with a history of domestic violence who quickly became the prime suspect in his children’s deaths. The discovery by fire investigators of more than 20 indicators of arson at the scene of the fire pointed directly to Willingham’s guilt.

At the trial, jurors heard evidence that Willingham had confessed to a fellow inmate; that he was a sociopath; and that he had posted satanic images on the walls of his house. “He was an individual with essentially no redeeming value,” former prosecutor John Jackson tells FRONTLINE. “This was his crowning achievement as a psychopath: the murder of his three children.”

Death by Fire tells the story a writer named Elizabeth Gilbert who first began to question Willingham’s conviction and to draw attention to the possible miscarriage of justice after corresponding with Willingham as part of a prison pen pal program. As Gilbert dug into Willingham’s case, she found problems with the alleged jailhouse confession and the evidence that Willingham was a sociopath or Satanist. In fact, the satanic images prosecutors had introduced at trial were posters for the rock bands Iron Maiden and Led Zeppelin. “They never established a motive,” Gilbert tells FRONTLINE. “So then their motive shifted to Todd just being an evil person.”

Death by Fire is a FRONTLINE production with Kirk Documentary Group in association with StartBox Films. The producer and director is Jessie Deeter. The co-producer is Mike Wiser. The writers are Mike Wiser and Michael Kirk. The senior producer is Michael Kirk. FRONTLINE is produced by WGBH Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Major funding for FRONTLINE is provided by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Reva and David Logan. Additional funding is provided by the Park Foundation and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund. FRONTLINE is closed-captioned for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers and described for people who are blind or visually impaired by the Media Access Group at WGBH. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. The senior producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath. The executive producer of FRONTLINE is David Fanning.

In the next post, I'll link coverage of Friday's meeting of the Forensic Science Commission.

Earlier coverage begins with this post.  All Willingham coverage is available through the Todd Willingham category index.

The Beyler report prepared for the Forensic Science Commission is here in Adobe .pdf format.

David Grann's September 2009 New Yorker article is noted here.    Steve Mills and Maurice Possley first reported on the case in a 2004 Chicago Tribune series on junk science.  The December 9, 2004 report was titled,"Man executed on disproved forensics."

The Innocence Project has a Todd Willingham resource page which provides a concise overview of the Willingham case with links to all relevant documents.

An Event in Washington, DC

"Fighting Crime in the U.S. and Internationally: Is the Death Penalty Necessary?  A Unique Conversation Between U.S. and European Law Enforcement," takes place tomorrow, October 13, 2010, at 9:30 a.m., at the National Press Club.  The event is sponsored by the Death Penalty Information Center, Death Penalty Focus, and Equal Justice USA.

At a time when the death penalty is in the news, including a halt to executions in California and the first execution of a woman in 100 years in Virginia, law enforcement officers from the U.S. and Europe will engage in the first public discussion about whether the death penalty helps or hurts in keeping citizens safe, healing victims, and using crime-fighting resources efficiently. The discussion with Q and A will be held at the National Press Club in the Lisagor Room, on October 13, 2010 from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m.  A light breakfast will be served.

Richard Dieter, Executive Director of Death Penalty Information Center, will moderate this unique, frank discussion. Members of the media will be invited to ask questions of the law enforcement officers after their opening discussion. The speakers are:

    * Police Detective Robert Alvarez, a 17 year veteran of the Edinburg, Texas Police Department. Det. Alvarez, once a strong supporter of the death penalty, now believes that "Texas is the biggest serial killer of all." A critical event in changing his views was a case where a defendant with a minor role in a crime was sentenced to death, while the shooters were allowed to live. Det. Alvarez is coming out publicly against the death penalty for the first time at this event.

    * Police Chief James Abbott of West Orange, New Jersey. Chief Abbott was a strong supporter of the death penalty before studying it for six months as a member of the New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission. He still believes in the death penalty in theory, but in practice, "no state has found a way to carry out the death penalty quickly and cheaply and also accurately."

    * Former Detective Superintendent Bob Denmark of Lancashire Constabulary, England. Det. Supt. Denmark investigated more than 100 homicides in the U.K. and genocide in Africa on behalf of the United Nations. His remarks will include cases where he felt certain that a defendant was guilty, but was later proven to be wrong. Det. Supt. Denmark is the author of "Ethical Investigation: A Practical Guide for Police Officers," a training manual which guards against forced confessions, torture or other human rights violations.

    * Antonio Cluny, Senior Portuguese Public Prosecutor. Prosecutor Cluny will discuss how his country has prosecuted terrorism without the death penalty or life without parole, including after a turbulent revolution in 1974 and continuing until today. He was the President of the Portuguese Association of the Prosecutors at the time of Madeleine McCann's disappearance.

Criminal Justice Integrity Unit News

Today's Dallas Morning News reports, "Judge Barbara Hervey, Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit working to educate officials about issues with forensic science," by Erin Mulvaney.

Barbara Hervey first noticed flaws in the criminal justice system when she was a law student, robbed at gunpoint on the San Antonio Riverwalk.

She could perfectly remember the gun and the face of the man who pointed it at her head. But police pressed her, even after she protested that she couldn’t, to identify his two accomplices.

Now a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals judge, Hervey thinks of that incident when she hears about mistaken eyewitness identifications.

“I knew how easily it could happen. You’re under that kind of stress, thinking, ‘I’m going to die any minute.’ In that moment, you aren’t thinking about your testimony in court,” she said.

In 2008 she launched the Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit to educate everyone from police to judges on problems with evidence, including arson science, which is at the center of the Cameron Todd Willingham case, a 2004 execution that has drawn national scrutiny.

As a special court hearing on the Willingham case has been delayed until Oct. 14, the integrity unit is convening a session Thursday in Austin on forensic science, including how arson evidence is examined.

Garnering less publicity than the court hearings, the session nevertheless has attracted more than 420 participants — prosecutors, judges, defense lawyers, law professors and crime lab experts.

So many signed up that an overflow room was added and the seminars, including crime lab procedures and science experts, will now be streamed on the Internet.

It was when Texas began reviewing cases, led by advances in DNA technology, that Hervey decided to do something to fix the system. Since the reviews began in 2001, the state has exonerated more than 40 wrongly convicted people, with more than two-thirds of the bad cases linked to mistaken eyewitness identifications.

And:

Bill Allison, an integrity unit member and director of the University of Texas School of Law’s Center for Actual Innocence, said that there may be 750 inmates in prison for arson and that the state has no clue what the standards are for investigation and admitting fire science evidence.

“The questions aren’t going to get easier, they are going to get harder,” he said.

Even judges have a hard time keeping up, Hervey said. A survey in conducted in the spring asked judges about forensic science and the standards for allowing certain expert testimony and evidence.

The survey showed that the majority acknowledged they had little to no knowledge of the basics of forensic science and its use in trials. The results became a catalyst for the Austin seminar.

Earlier coverage is here, and in the Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit index.

 

Death Penalty Matters - The SMU Human Rights Series

The Dallas Morning News Death Penalty blog posts, "Why don't people in Texas talk about the death penalty?"  It's by Rick Halperin, Director of SMU's Human Rights program.

The death penalty in America should be a topic of constant discussion in public forums and political conversation. The reality is that, in Texas - the state that has executed more people than any other single jurisdiction in the free world since 1976 - the silence about the death penalty is deafening.

With 3,200 people in more than 30 states waiting to be killed by electrocution, firing squad, gassing, hanging and chemical poisoning, how can it not generate discussion?

The answer is twofold. First, many Texans (and Americans) simply aren't aware of the issue. Second, speaking about the death penalty involves individuals confronting the dark side of human behavior and profoundly disturbing aspects of our own individual upbringings. To talk about the death penalty is automatically to start from a place of powerful negativity. The words typically associated with the core issues of this subject are negative: murder, tears, rage, loss and pain. This is because the larger issue surrounding the death penalty is violence in our society.

And:

Many who are not opposed to the death penalty, including the Dallas district attorney, argue that it should be reserved for those who have been convicted of the most heinous crimes. But, in fact, those who are executed are not the "worst of the worst."

Compare the crimes of the typical person executed - someone who usually has committed a single homicide - with someone who remains alive and in prison despite the large number of people they have killed. Gary Ridgway, the Seattle Green River Killer, was sentenced to life without parole although he murdered 48 women. Zacarias Moussaoui received life without parole despite being convicted of conspiring to kill the nearly 3,000 Americans who died in the 9/11 attacks.

If Ridgway and Moussaoui do not constitute the "worst of the worst," then who does?

Today's Morning News also carries the OpEd, "The corrosive effects of capital punishment."  It's by Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA.

Human rights violations can be the product of evil minds, but more often they are the result of unjust and dysfunctional systems. The Texas death penalty has become notorious for its dysfunctionality.

In my many years of working for human rights and death penalty abolition, I have found that correcting such flawed systems requires putting clear limits on state power. This is why abolition of the death penalty in Texas is imperative.

When Amnesty International came into existence in 1961, capital punishment was widely used worldwide. Today, as the organization approaches its 50th birthday, two-thirds of all nations have repealed the death penalty or abandoned it in practice. Emerging from the oppression of totalitarian regimes, many countries have seen death penalty abolition as a way to permanently check the power of the state.

This movement has been slower to take root in some parts of the world, including in the United States and, especially, in Texas. In 2009, Texas put more prisoners to death than all but six countries – Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq , Iran, China and the entire United States.

But concerned Texans have begun to look more critically at their state, as evidenced by the SMU series "Death Penalty Matters," where I will be speaking tomorrow. The series exposes a deeply flawed, error-prone system that should not be trusted with the irreversible punishment of death.

And:

On Oct. 13, the Supreme Court will hear the case of Henry Skinner, a Texas death row inmate who is seeking to test DNA evidence that he argues could challenge his conviction. There is simply no reason not to test relevant DNA evidence. If Skinner was wrongfully convicted, shouldn't every effort be made to find out – before he is executed? But prosecutors, focused on winning and denying the possibility of error, are opposing these efforts.

The many DNA exonerations in Dallas demonstrate how the criminal justice system gets things wrong. But capital cases usually do not include DNA evidence, so mistakes in those cases are less likely to be caught. And what the Willingham and Skinner cases show is that even when scientific evidence does exist, there are no guarantees errors will be corrected. Winning can become as important – or more important – as truth.

In Texas, where judges are elected, politics can intervene at every level. Cases are often high-profile, and the pressure to convict and punish can be intense. Pursuing death sentences advances careers; opposing capital punishment can end them, or so it is believed.

Details of the Fall Series, Death Penalty Matters is here.  The next event is tomorrow evening:

October 7 - 7:00 p.m.
Larry Cox, Executive Director, Amnesty International USA
“The Status of & the Struggle Against the Death
Penalty Nationally & Internationally”
Hughes-Trigg Forum, 3140 Dyer Street

National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims

Saturday marked the fourth annual National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims.

Scripps Howard News Service posted, "Hundreds of murder victims to be honored at upcoming conference."  It by Adam Liebenforfer.

The forum was created in 2007 when Congress designated Sept. 25 as the National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims. Robert and Charlotte Hullinger, of Cincinnati, the main advocates for the day, formed Parents of Murdered Children following the 1978 murder of their 19-year-old daughter, Lisa, while she was studying in Germany. The annual day of observance is on the date Lisa was murdered. The parents' group has more than 75 chapters in the U.S., according to its website.

The article also notes  a Scripps Howard News Service investigative package on unsolved murders.  It's available here.

In New York, "Families of murder victims hold memorial ceremony," by Lauren Stanforth appears in the Albany Times Union.

The Albany/Capital District chapter of Parents of Murdered Children sponsored Sunday's event locally. A national forum was held Saturday in Washington, D.C., to explore issues survivors face and ways their needs can be met. A wall honoring the names of thousands of murder victims, which also includes local victims' names, was also unveiled at the national event.

The short Schenectady ceremony was preceded by a talk by Schenectady resident David Kaczynski, brother of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. David Kaczynski is now executive director of New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. He talked about how his life has been greatly affected by meeting and having relationships with the families of his brothers' victims. He said the most important thing victims' families can do is share their stories in the hopes that it can dissuade others from violence.

"We know that trauma unaddressed is trauma that could be relived," David Kaczynski said. "The real fear is that kids in these communities will grow up thinking this is normal."

The OpEd, "Today is a day to reflect on lives lost," by Barbara Keshen appeared in the Concord Monitor.

Created by Congress, the day increases public awareness through events focused on lives lost to homicide; the trauma surviving families, friends and communities face in the aftermath of homicide; and ways in which victim service programs and allied professionals can assist survivors.

Although homicide statistics have decreased nationally and New Hampshire's remain the lowest in the country, any murder has a continual ripple effect on surviving families of victims and the communities where the victims' lived. A murdered child whose promise will never be realized means a potential teacher, astronaut, doctor or policymaker is gone forever. Murdered adults will cease supporting their elderly parents. They will not attend their children's graduations or weddings, or see their grandchildren. Instead of a family member, there's an empty chair at the dining table where he or she once sat.

Murder leaves a hole in the hearts of the victims' families and in the hearts of our communities - a hole that executing those who murder does not fill. In one way or another, we all share the loss when anyone is murdered.

Margaret Summers posted, "Gone Too Soon: Honoring Homicide Victims."  She's the Communications Director for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Murder decimates not only families and friends, but also entire communities.  Murder rips away our teachers, our doctors and nurses, our police officers, our sanitation workers, everyone who once made a significant contribution to our neighborhoods.  As the title of a song Stevie Wonder sings has it, they are “Gone Too Soon.”

The annual National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims on September 25 gives us all the opportunity to remember those lost to homicide, and honor their memories.  Cities and states hold programs, workshops and other events focusing on the impact of murder on families and communities, the issues survivors of homicide victims face, and ways to better support and serve survivors.

The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has long had the participation of family members of murder victims on its Board of Directors and in its states’ Affiliates.  They have insisted that their murdered loved ones would not have wanted their killers executed in their names.  However, they recognized that in the national debate over capital punishment, the needs of homicide victims’ survivors are sometimes unintentionally overlooked.  NCADP’s new program, Rachel’s Fund, is designed to strengthen the bonds between the abolition movement and families of murder victims and of death row prisoners, so that together we may help create effective policies that prevent violent crime, ensure our communities’ safety, and assist victims’ survivors.

Related posts are in the victims' issues index.

Willingham Case on Forensic Science Commission Agenda

The Forensic Science Commission's next meeting is September 17, and the Todd Willingham case is on the agenda.

In today's Austin American-Statesman, Chuck Lindell reports, "Fire marshal backs arson finding in man's execution."  Here's an extended excerpt:

The State Fire Marshal's Office stands behind its controversial conclusion that Cameron Todd Willingham started the house fire that killed his three children in 1991, contradicting arson experts and scientists who insist the agency relied on bad science in its investigation.

In a pointed letter to the Texas Forensic Science Commission , which is nearing the end of a contentious review of the Willingham arson investigation, Fire Marshal Paul Maldonado defended his agency's handling of the case that led to Willingham's execution in 2004.

In July, the commission announced a tentative finding that investigators employed "flawed science" — including now-debunked beliefs that certain fire behaviors point to arson — to conclude that Willingham intentionally set fire to his Corsicana home.

But Maldonado said his agency's investigation remains valid, even after modern, scientific arson standards are applied.

"We stand by the original investigator's report and conclusions," Maldonado said in his Aug. 20 letter to the commission. "Should any subsequent analysis be performed to test other theories and possibilities of the cause and origin of the fire, we will of course re-examine the report again."

Maldonado's letter was among 11 received last month after the commission solicited final comments before members prepare to write their report on the Willingham investigation at a specially called meeting Sept. 17 in Dallas. The four-member Willingham subcommittee will have draft language for the rest of the seven-member panel to consider, but much of the discussion on final wording will take place during the open meeting, Chairman John Bradley said Wednesday.

Some letter writers criticized the State Fire Marshal's Office, which provides arson investigation help to communities across Texas, for declining to acknowledge shortcomings in the Willingham case.

"For the fire marshal's office to permit (Willingham) to remain imprisoned during all those years leading up to his execution, in spite of knowing for most of those years that the compelling testimony \u2026 provided at trial was solidly wrong, is to partake in unethical scientific behavior of the most extreme kind," wrote Thomas Bohan, a 35-year forensic physicist from Maine.

The fire marshal's office compounded its "unethical, negligent behavior" by failing to review similar arson cases that may have been influenced by false or misleading arson indicators, Bohan said.

"Willingham case on science panel agenda for Sept. 17," is the title of Janet Jacobs's preview in the Corsicana Daily Sun. 

A special meeting of the Texas Forensics Science Commission will take place at 9:30 a.m. Sept. 17 at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Dallas near Love Field specifically to address the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, according to director Leigh Tomlin.

Last week, the city issued its final response to the case of the Corsicana man convicted of killing his three daughters in a house fire in December 1991. Willingham was tried in 1992 and died by lethal injection in 2004.

In 2005, the state created a forensics commission to oversee the professionalism of law-enforcement crime laboratories. At the request of the Innocence Project, the commission agreed to look at the Willingham case.

John Bradley, who heads up the commission, said the hope is to finish up the topic at the September meeting.

“We’re going to meet to discuss and deal with the report for the Willingham case,” Bradley said. “Obviously, the goal is to see if we can complete it and vote on it.”

The Innocence Project has webcast past FSC meeting dealing with arson investigations.  I'll check to see if it will be providing a feed for this meeting and, if so, provide the link.

The Willingham case will be the subject of a PBS Frontline investigation this fall.  The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports, "Ken Burns leads PBS fall lineup," by TV writer Mark Dawidziak.

"Frontline" (10 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 19): Did Texas execute an innocent man? "Death by Fire" looks at the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, convicted for the arson deaths of his three young children. With access to those closest to the case, the PBS series examines the Willingham conviction in light of new science that raises doubts about whether the fire at the center of the case was really arson.

Earlier coverage begins here.  All Willingham coverage is available through the Todd Willingham category index.

The Beyler report prepared for the Forensic Science Commission is here in Adobe .pdf format.

David Grann's September 2009 New Yorker article is noted here.    Steve Mills and Maurice Possley first reported on the case in a 2004 Chicago Tribune series on junk science.  The December 9, 2004 report was titled,"Man executed on disproved forensics."

The Innocence Project has a Todd Willingham resource page which provides a concise overview of the Willingham case with links to all relevant documents.

CBS News Sunday Morning

Tomorrow's broadcast of Sunday Morning will feature, "The Slow Death of the Death Penalty?

With Utah's Impending Execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner by Firing Squad, Seth Doane Reports on the Increasingly Rare Imposition of Capital Punishment.

Sunday Morning will air nationally Sunday, June 13 at 9 a.m. ET/PT.  Check your local CBS affiliate for the broadcast time in your area.   You'll be able to watch the report on the Sunday Morning website, later in the day on Sunday.

Craig Watkins at Texas Tribune's TribLive

This morning's TribLive event hosted Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins.  There were extensive comments about Dallas County's Conviction Integrity Unit that has worked to exonerate individuals who had been wrongfully convicted and incarcerated.  The Tribune's Evan Smith interviewed Watkins.

Emily Ramshaw posts, "Watkins Plays Self-Defense," at the Tribune.

Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, under fire at home for his handling of an investigation into Democratic county constables, played defense before an Austin crowd this morning in a TribLive interview with the Tribune's Evan Smith.

The Tribune should have video posted shortly.  Watkins is running for re-election in the November general election.

A Summit on the Constitutional Right to Counsel

The Constitutional Right to Counsel Summit will be held Tuesday, June 15th, from 2:00 pm to 5:00 p.m., in Room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building, in Washington, DC.  The event is open to the public.

The Summit will bring together members of Congress, congressional staff, judges, prosecutors, scholars, public defenders, and other legal practitioners to discuss the impact the current public defense crisis is having on the effective operation of states' criminal justice systems and examine the federal government's role in ensuring that every state meets its Sixth Amendment responsibility to provide competent counsel.

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), chair of the House Crime Subcommittee, are co-sponsoring the Summit.

Panel 1: The Right to Counsel Crisis in the States

John Chisholm, District Attorney, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin
Alan Crotzer, Exoneree and Probation & Community Intervention Officer, Florida Department of Juvenile Justice
Carlos Martinez, Public Defender, Miami-Dade County, Florida
Hon. Carolyn Temin, Senior Judge, Court of Common Pleas, First Judicial District of Pennsylvania
Hon. Michael Wolff, Judge, Suprme Court of Missouri
Moderator - Melanca Clark, Counsel, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

Panel 2: The Federal Response to the Right to Counsel Crisis

Nancy Diehl, Former Prosecutor, Wayne County Michigan; President, State Bar of Michigan (2004-2005)
George Kendall, Of Counsel and Director of Public Service Initiative, Squire, Sanders & Dempsey LLP, New York
Norman Lefstein, Professor of Law & Dean Emeritus, Indiana University School of Law - Indianapolis; Chair, Indigent Defense Advisory Group, American Bar Association Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defense
Laurence Tribe, Senior Cousel for Access to Justice Initiative, U.S. Department of Justice
Moderator - Virginia Sloan, President, The Constitution Project

Related posts are in the indigent defense index.

A New Book By Wilbert Rideau - Available Tuesday

In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance will be available Tuesday, April 27.  You can order now at the link from Amazon.com, or visit your local independent bookseller on Tuesday.  It's published by Random House.

Wilbert Rideau is scheduled to be featured on the CBS News program Sunday Morning, this Sunday.

Here's the description from Publisher's Weekly, via Amazon.

A death row inmate finds redemption as a prison journalist in this uplifting memoir. In 1961, after a bungled bank robbery, Rideau was convicted of murder at the age of 19 and received a death sentence that was later commuted to life in prison at Louisiana's Angola penitentiary, then the most violent in the nation. Against all expectations, his own included, he turned his up-to-then cursed life around, becoming editor of the prison newsmagazine, the Angolite, and an NPR correspondent who published nationally acclaimed articles on prison violence, rape and sexual slavery, and the cruelty of the electric chair. Rideau frames his 44-year fight to get his conviction reduced to manslaughter and win parole (he succeeded in 2005) as a black man's struggle against a racist criminal justice establishment. More inspiring is his self-reclamation through tough, committed journalism in an unpropitious setting where survival required canny alliance building against predatory inmates and callous authorities alike. To a society that treats convicts as a worthless underclass, Rideau's story is a compelling reminder that rehabilitation should be the focus of a penal system. 16 pages of photos; 2 maps. 

Amazon also has an excerpt.

Rideau has appeared on ABC News Nightline a number of times with Ted Koppel, including a January 2005 segment after his release from prison.  Here's what Koppel says about the book:

“If years in solitary confinement and on death row shaped and refined the young killer, Wilbert Rideau, it can surely be said that Rideau did as much for the prison that held him longest, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. This is a breathtaking and, ultimately, triumphant story of rehabilitation through endurance and courageous journalism.  It is also a searing indictment of a broken, corrupt penal system that does far more damage than good to our society as a whole.  This is an extraordinary book.”  

The May/June issue of Mother Jones features, "Inside Man: An Interview with Wilbert Rideau," conducted by David Gilson.

Journalism helped reform Wilbert Rideau—and in turn, he used it to reform one of the country's toughest prisons. In 1961, the 19-year-old Rideau was sentenced to death for killing a woman during a bungled bank robbery in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Sent to Angola state penitentiary, he underwent a profound transformation. After his sentence was commuted to life, he became editor of the prison magazine, the Angolite, turning it into a respected publication that exposed abuses by guards and inmates alike and was nominated for seven National Magazine Awards. He became a correspondent for NPR's Fresh Air and codirected the Oscar-nominated documentary The Farm. Several wardens vouched for his complete rehabilitation, yet a mix of racial politics and tough-on-crime posturing blocked his release for more than three decades. Finally, his case was reopened, and in early 2005 he was found guilty of manslaughter and let go with time served. Rideau is the author of a new memoir, In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance. He spoke from his home in Baton Rouge, joined by his wife, Linda LaBranche.

Mother Jones: You've been out of prison for a little over five years. I'm curious: What's been most surprising about being out?

Wilbert Rideau: You hear all these horror stories from other ex-cons, and I figured people are gonna dump on you and whatnot. But you know, largely people treated me respectfully. People were helpful, and I was pretty surprised—I mean, I'm sure that everyone didn't see me that way or, you know, everybody didn't feel kindly toward me, but it's to their credit that they kept it to themselves. I was really surprised by that. I was also surprised by the amount of—not in relation to me—the incivility out here. In prison it's not as uncivil because everybody plays for keeps. So you're kind of careful about what you say to others and how you treat others.

It's not like prison. In prison, everything is there within reach because it's an isolated, self-contained community. If you want your shirt cleaned, there's a laundry. If you want to eat, there's a dining room. Whatever you want, you can make things happen. Not out here. If you want your shirt cleaned, you either got to wash it and press it yourself or get in your car and drive down to a cleaner's. Prison is all sort of planned out, and you can pretty much predict what you're going to be doing five years from now. But out here's it's totally different, totally a different ballgame. You can have the best-laid plans—and then your car doesn't start. Those are the things you don't think about when you're fantasizing about freedom.

MJ: Do you have any habits or routines you developed in prison you find yourself falling back on?

WR: Not so much falling back on—kind of hard to shake. The questioning of motives, you don't accept things at face value, always questioning why—that's a prison thing. It serves you well because it's kind of protective, but that's a remnant from prison. I used to always want to sit with my back to the wall, but I've lost that. I no longer do that; in fact, I just get a chair just like anyone else. I still tend to over-explain myself—that's something you pick up in prison because you always have to justify what you do and explain what you want.

Related posts are in the books index.

Texas Forensic Science Commission to Meet Friday

The FSC meeting will convene at 9:30 am tomorrow morning in the Omni Madalay Hotel in Las Colinas, near downtown Dallas.  The topic of arson investigations is on the Commission's agenda.

As it did in January, the Innocence Project will webcast the meeting.  It will be available at this LINK.  In announcing the webcast, the Innocence Project said:

The Willingham case was not discussed when the commission met in January, but it is on the agenda for Friday’s meeting.

The Texas Forensic Science Commission was created by the Texas Legislature in 2005 for the purpose of investigating all allegations of negligence or misconduct that would significantly affect the results of forensic analysis.  

The Innocence Project formally asked the commission to investigate the Willingham and Willis cases in 2006. That request specifically asked the commission to determine whether there was negligence or misconduct in the forensic analysis that initially deemed the fire arson and – importantly – to determine whether other arson convictions in Texas may have been based on the same kind of unreliable forensic analysis.

The January meeting in McAllen produced fireworks when Chairman John Bradley violated the Texas Open Meetings Act by closing the meeting to one camera crew, noted here.

Earlier coverage of the Commission begins with this post.

Earlier coverage of the Todd Willingham case begins with this post.  All coverage is available through the Todd Willingham category index.

The Beyler report prepared for the Forensic Science Commission is here in Adobe .pdf format.

David Grann's September 2009 New Yorker article is noted here.    Steve Mills and Maurice Possley first reported on the case in a 2004 Chicago Tribune series on junk science.  The December 9, 2004 report was titled,"Man executed on disproved forensics."

The Innocence Project, which webcast Friday's FSC meeting, has a Todd Willingham resource page which provides a concise overview of the Willingham case with links to all relevant documents.