Resources

 

Selected Links relating to the Death Penalty:

ABA Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project - the Project will work toward achieving a national moratorium on executions until the death penalty process is reformed.

Amnesty International - tracks death penalty internationally, includes statistics and general information, country reports.

Bureau of Justice Statistics - Capital Punishment 2003 criminal justice statistics, includes information on publications, press releases, and other BJS services.

Capital Jury Project - a continuing program of research based at Northeastern University on the decision making of capital jurors. [/]

Death Penalty Information Center- the definitive source for statistical information and analysis regarding capital punishment.

Death Row USA - bi-annual report produced by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund which gathers data on executions and death row prisoners.

Equal Justice Initiative - provides assistance for Alabama death row inmates in the post conviction appeals process.

Fair Trial Initiative - confronts the crisis of incompetent counsel for indigent defendants facing the death penalty. Funds fellowships for recent law graduates to work with under funded trial counsel in capital cases, and provides internships for law students to do a variety of trial related capital work.

Gallows Humor - a satirical look at the death penalty, gallowshumor.com is a growing on line archive of political cartoons that deal with capital punishment, with links to death penalty information web sites.

Human Writes - a not for profit humanitarian organization, befriending people on Death Row in the United States.

International Justice Project - works towards the development, coordination and increased employment of international law and human rights standards as they pertain to capital punishment.

Life Lines - supports and befriends prisoners on Death Row in the United States, through letter writing.

The Moratorium Campaign - works towards obtaining a moratorium on the death penalty and educating the public..

Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights - is an organization with a national and international focus actively working to abolish the death penalty. MVFHR members are murder victims' family members and family members of the executed who are opposed to killing in all cases whether it be homicide, state killing, or extrajudicial killings and "disappearances."

Prejean.org - the official website of Sr. Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking.

Sant'Egidio Community of Italy movement of Catholic lay people, founded in Rome, dedicated to death penalty abolition.

Southern Center for Human Rights death penalty news, articles and reports, source for prison reform resources, and legal/advocacy resources.

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Selected Readings on the Death Penalty and Criminal Justice:

William J. Bowers, The Capital Jury Project: Rationale, Design, and a Preview of Early Findings, 70 Indiana Law Journal 1043 (1995).

Stephen B. Bright, Counsel for the Poor: The Death Sentence Not for the Worst Crime but for the Worst Lawyer, 103 Yale L.J. 1835 (1994).

Stephen B.Bright, The Electric Chair and the Chain Gang: Choices and Challenges for America's Future, 71 Notre Dame Law Review 845 (1996).

David Feige, The Dark Side of Innocence, New York Times Magazine, June 15, 2003.

Craig Haney, Violence and the Capital Jury: Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement and the Impulse to Condemn to Death, 49 Stan. L. Rev. 1447 (1997).

Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Black Man's Burden: Race and the Death Penalty in America?, 81 Oregon Law Review 15 (2002).

Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Beyond Justifications: Seeking Motivations to Sustain Public Defenders, 106 Harv. L. Rev. 1239 (1993).

Austin Sarat, ABA's Proposed Moratorium: Recapturing the Spirit of Furman: the American Bar Association and the New Abolitionist Politics, 61 Law & Contemp. Prob. 5 (1998). ]

Abbe Smith, Can You Be a Good Person and a Good Prosecutor?, 14 Geo. J. Legal Ethics 355, 388 89 (2001)

Abbe Smith and William Montross, The Calling of Criminal Defense, 50 Mercer L. Rev. 443 (1999).

Loic Wacquant, From Slavery to Mass Incarceration: Rethinking the "Race Question" in the United States, 13 New Left Rev. 41 (2002).