CURRENT News

Boston Globe: The long, hard half-life of Lawyer Johnson

June 22, 2012

Boston Globe has the following feature story about WTI member Lawyer Johnson. This year marks exactly three decades since Johnson was freed from the prison in Walpole after 10 years in prison for a murder he is adamant he did not commit. He was the last person sentenced to die in Massachusetts before the Commonwealth did away with capital punishment in 1974. Read more...

Death Penalty Opponents Bring Campaign To San Diego

June 21, 2012

On Tuesday, the SAFE California campaign came to San Diego, bringing in former death row inmates to talk about their innocence and why they believe California should become the 18th state in the nation to do away with the death penalty. The SAFE California ACT seeks to replace the death penalty with life in prison without parole. Read more...

Former Death Row inmate sues city of Chicago

June 18, 2012

Former El Rukn was swept up in a 1980s drug task force. He fears a new task force may lead history to repeat itself. Read more...

Texas Democratic Party Adopts Platform In Favor of Repealing the Death Penalty

June 11, 2012

After 12 years of organizing and lobbying by ordinary grassroots Democrats across the state as well as by exonerated former death row inmates, the Texas Democratic Party has adopted a platform that calls for repealing the death penalty in Texas. Read more...

Tidal Basin Review - Spring 2012

May 23, 2012

Tidal Basin Review, a DC-based, Afrocentric, creative arts journal run by an collective of editors, has just come out with their new issue featuring Delbert Tibbs, Jeremy Sheets, and Ron Keine's pieces on Troy Davis. Read more...

LA Times: Yes on the SAFE California Act

May 23, 2012

The Los Angeles Times issues a very early endorsement of SAFE California Act. It would replace the death penalty with a sentence of life without parole, and solve a host of problems bedeviling the state law enforcement system. Read more...

Aljazeera: How many innocent people has the US executed?

May 18, 2012

WTI member Nate Fields appeared on Al Jazeera's Inside Story Americas to talk about the case of Carlos De Luna. Read more...

Columbia Law Review: An Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution

May 16, 2012

Did Texas execute an innocent man? Did it leave the real killer on the streets to terrorize his neighbors for years to come? Los Tocayos Carlos, a book-length monograph and comprehensive website published by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, helps answer these haunting questions. Based on one of the most thorough investigations of a criminal case in U.S. history, the groundbreaking article by Columbia Law School Professor James Liebman and a team of students uncovers evidence that Carlos DeLuna, a poor Hispanic man with childlike intelligence who was executed in Texas in 1989, was innocent. Read more...