|
Capital Punishment Project
The Capital Punishment Project (CPP) challenges the unfairness and arbitrariness of capital punishment while working toward the ultimate goal of abolishing the death penalty. The Project engages in legislative reform, public education and advocacy as well as strategic litigation, including the direct representation of capital defendants. The project priorities include challenging racial economic and geographic discrimination in the application of the death penalty, building the case for an exemption of the death penalty to the mentally ill, improving the quality of counsel, and protecting the innocent.
> Learn more about the death penalty
> Learn more about the ACLU's Capital Punishment Project
ACLU Challenges Conviction and Death Sentence in Alabama
The CPP filed a direct appeal brief in the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals challenging Montez Spradley’s conviction and death sentence. The State’s evidence against Mr. Spradley, a young African-American man convicted of killing a 58-year-old white grandmother, was alarmingly thin and riddled with inconsistencies. No physical evidence or eyewitness testimony connected him to the murder. The appeal raises numerous legal challenges to his conviction. It also challenges the trial judge’s decision to override the jury’s 10-2 recommendation of life imprisonment and to sentence Mr. Spradley to death.
> Read the brief
Kennedy v. Louisiana
The CPP filed an amicus curiae brief in this case where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that imposition of the death-penalty for non-homicide child rape violates the Eighth Amendment. The CPP’s brief demonstrated that the use of the death penalty for rape historically has been riddled with racial bias. CPP’s director John Holdridge was the architect of the strategy used to fight the statute in another Louisiana case.
> Amicus
> Case Profile
ACLU Challenges Texas Death Sentence Obtained Under False Pretenses
The ACLU has filed a brief challenging the death sentence of Texas death-row inmate Adrian Estrada, who was sentenced to death based on the State's presentation of false evidence concerning Texas prison policy. Notes the jury sent to the judge during deliberations establish that the false testimony was the key to the decision to sentence Mr. Estrada to die. Learn more >>
Innocent North Carolina Man Exonerated After 14 Years On Death Row
On May 2, 2008, the District Attorney of North Carolina's Duplin County dropped all charges against Levon "Bo" Jones, who has spent the last 14 years of his life on the state's death row after being wrongfully convicted for the 1987 murder of Leamon Grady. A federal judge ordered Jones off death row in 2006 and overturned his conviction, declaring that Jones' initial defense attorneys missed critical evidence pointing to his innocence. Learn More >>
Supreme Court Upholds Lethal Injection in Kentucky
On April 16, 2008, the Supreme Court delivered the decision in Baze v. Rees. The court found the unnecessary risk of excruciating pain associated with the lethal injection protocol used for executions in 38 states does not violate the Eighth Amendment prohitibion of "cruel and unusual punishment." The Capital Punishment Project filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case. Learn More >>
> Read the brief
> Supreme Court Upholds Lethal Injection in Kentucky
Tennessee Client Richard Taylor Wins Appeal and Receives a Life Sentence
On March 7, 2008, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the conviction and death sentence of Richard Taylor, a severely mentally ill man who had twice been forced to stand trial despite his mental illness. On June 3, 2008, Taylor entered a plea of guilty in exchange for a sentence of life imprisonment. Taylor was represented during the appeal and at the plea hearing by the American Civil Liberties Union and Kelly Gleason, then a private attorney and now with the Office of the Tennessee Post-Conviction Defender.
> Death Sentence of Mentally Ill Man Reversed (3/11/2008)
> Learn More: State of Tennessee v. Taylor
New Jersey Rejects Death Penalty
Governor Jon Corzine has signed into law a measure, which passed the state legislature last week with bipartisan majorities, replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment for the most serious offenders. New Jersey becomes the first state since 1965 to legislatively repeal the death penalty, generating forward momentum in the campaign to end capital punishment nationwide, said the American Civil Liberties Union.
> ACLU Says New Jersey's Historic Rejection of Death Penalty Reflects Shift in Public Opinion (12/17/2007)
> NJ Governor Thanks ACLU (nj.gov, off-site)
ACLU Victory in Louisiana Capital Case
On October 29, 2007, the United States Supreme Court denied the State of Louisiana's petition to hear State of Lousiana v. Langley, thereby allowing the Louisiana Supreme Court's decision to stand. On May 22, 2007, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that the State could not retry Ricky Joseph Langley for capital murder and seek his execution. The decision reversed a Louisiana Court of Appeal ruling that would have permitted a capital defendant acquitted of first-degree murder to be retried for the first-degree count. Read more >>
Report Finds Minority Death Row Inmates Convicted of Killing Whites More Likely to Face Execution
A recent study published in the American Sociological Review found that African-American and Hispanic inmates on death row who are convicted of killing white victims are significantly more likely to be executed than other offenders. The report also finds that the political and social climate of the state in which inmates are imprisoned influences whether they will be executed or not. Learn More >> | 
