stopexecutions

A petition to Governor Rick Perry and the State of Texas to acknowledge that the fire in the Cameron Todd Willingham case was not arson, therefore no crime was committed and on February 17, 2004, Texas executed an innocent man.

Texas Anti-Death Penalty Groups Nominated for Social Media Leadership Award
The Jenzabar Foundation Social Media Leadership Award recognizes non-profits using social media tools to advance their causes. The foundation is awarding $3,000 in a voting process that ends on May 8, 2009.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1694695/texas_antideath_penalty_groups_nominated.html

Tell President-Elect Obama to End the Federal Death Penalty

 

Follow this link to tell President-elect Obama that he should issue an executive order soon after taking office to establish a moratorium on federal executions and directing the Justice Department to establish new rules to protect innocent people from execution, for instance by having the federal government not seek the death penalty in any prosecutions during his term in office and to use federal money to better fund state-level innocence protection programs. You can also give him your other ideas on reforming the criminal justice system.

http://change.gov/page/s/ofthepeople

The page linked to above on Obama's new transition website invites people to "tell us your ideas and help us solve the biggest challenges facing our country."

"Since the federal government got back into the death penalty business in 1988, attorneys general have authorized 420 prosecutions, according to statistics kept by the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project: 180 during the 1990s, an average of 18 per year, and 240 since 2000, an average of 40 per year, mostly attributable to the Bush administration. "Of the 420 authorized prosecutions, 162 actually reached trial and sentencing. Juries imposed 105 life sentences and 57 death sentences. Since 2001, the beginning of the Bush administration, there have been 32 federal defendants sentenced to death ." (Marcia Coyle, National Law Journal, April 30, 2007).

Minorities Dominate Federal Death Penalty Prosecutions
Since 1988, the federal government has authorized seeking the death penalty against 382 defendants. Of the 382 approved prosecutions, 278 (73%) were against minority defendants. Of these defendants, 104 have been white, 64 Hispanic, 16 Asian/Indian/Pacific Islander, 3 Arab and 195 African American. Of the 44 inmates currently on federal death row, 26 (59%) are members of a minority group.
(Source: Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project (June 28, 2006)).

More information on the Federal Death Penalty

"State vs. Reed" - full version of award-winning documentary now online on Google Video
"State vs. Reed" is a 60 minute documentary that explores an explosive capital murder trial in Texas that has resulted in a questionable death penalty conviction of Bastrop, Texas' Rodney Reed. Thank you to the filmmakers, Frank Bustoz and Ryan Polomski, for making this important film available online. Thanks to the Texas Students Against the Death Penalty blog and Hooman Hedayati for the heads up. The Austin chapter of Campaign to End the Death Penalty has been working with the Reed family for years to prove Rodney's innocence. Reed, a then-28 year-old black male with a minor criminal record, was convicted in 1998 of the murder of Stacey Stites, a 19 year-old finacee' of a local police officer named Jimmy Fennell. Read more about the film in this Austin Chronicle article. Though Fennell was the primary suspect for over a year who failed two polygraph examinations, Reed was eventually arrested after DNA found on the victim was connected to him. Reed claims that he and the victim, who was Caucasian, shared a consensual sexual affair for over 6 months and that an encounter the night before would account for the finding of his DNA as well as a possible motive for the real killer. "State vs. Reed" dives into this complex and potentially benchmark case that still rattles the citizens of this small Central Texas town. By talking to those who knew best -- friends of the victim and family of the defendent, investigators, lawyers, journalists and Reed himself, on Texas' notorious Death Row -- the award winning documentary reveals a case fraught with open questions and unusual coincidences. Ultimately, the documentary reveals the mistake-prone system that sentences men and woman to death in the state of Texas at a rate incomparable around the world. Filmmakers Frank Bustoz and Ryan Polomski are first-time feature filmmakers, though have worked in the medium in central Texas for years. Previously, they have worked on the internationally screened short documentary, "Hecho a Mano: Tres Historias de Guatemala". "State vs. Reed" premiered at the 2006 South By Southwest Film Festival where it won the Lone Star States Audience Award. It has since been screened multiple times in the central Texas area, including the Kerrville Community Center in Bastrop, the Bastrop Public Access Channel (for seven straight nights), the George Washing Carver Museum and Cultural Center in east Austin, and as part of the Amnesty Interntional Film Festival on the University of Texas campus.

7th Annual March to Stop Executions

"Innocent People Have Been Executed"

Saturday, October 28th, 2006
Austin, Texas</b>

3 PM Meet at Texas Governor's Mansion (between 10th & 11th Streets on Lavaca)

3:30 March around mansion, down Congress Ave to Austin City Hall

Rally at Austin City Hall Plaza

Speakers include: Rose Rhoton, sister of Carlos De Luna. "If God ever gave me a second chance," Rhoton has said, "I would fight harder for Carlos." Other speakers to be announced soon.

Each October since 2000, people from all walks of life and all parts of Texas, the U.S. and other countries have taken a day out of their year and gathered in Austin to raise our voices together and loudly express our opposition to the death penalty.

Get on the Bus From Houston: Bus tickets are $20.00. Call or email TDPAM in Houston to reserve a seat or buy a ticket for a student, a senior or a person on fixed income who wants to go. AbolitionMovement@hotmail.com or call 713-503-2633.

Join us in Austin on Oct. 28th to demand a Stop to All Executions!

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Please Support the March by Donating Online to the Special March Account.

You can also donate offline by sending a check
to:

Texas Death Penalty Education and Resource Center

3616 Far West Blvd, Suite 117, Box 251

Austin, Texas 78731

Donations to the march through TDPERC, a 501 (c) (3), are tax-deductible

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The march is organized by people from many different groups working together as the March to Stop Executions Coalition. If your organization wants to be listed as a sponsor of the march, please let us know. The 7th Annual March to Stop Executions Coaliton includes:

Campaign to End the Death Penalty - Austin Chapter, Texas Moratorium Network, Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Committee to Free Frances Newton, Inside Books Project, Texas Students Against the Death Penalty, Texas Death Penalty Education and Resource Center, National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Journey of Hope, ISO, Democrats for Life, Death Penalty Reform Caucus of the Texas Democratic Party, Victims of Texas, Amnesty International, Texans for Peace, Austin Mennonite Church, CodePink Austin, El Pasoans Against the Death Penalty, Students Against the Death Penalty (the national group)

To become a sponsor or get involved, email us at:admin@texasmoratorium.org Or call us at: 512-302-6715.

Bryan McCann, a member of the Austin chapter of Campaign to End the Death Penalty, comments on the art show on May 22, 2006.

Rita Fuchsberg of Vermont is the artist who created "Ladies in Waiting". She lives in Vermont. The painting was exhibited in the show "Justice for All?: Artists Reflect on the Death Penalty in Austin May 6-22 at Gallery Lombardi.

Come to the Death Penalty Art Show in Austin at Gallery Lombardi, May 6-22, 2006. We received entries from more than 300 artists, who submitted about 700 artworks. The jurors were Annette Carlozzi, Senior Curator of the blanton Museum in Austin, Lora Reynolds of the Lora Reynolds Gallery and Malaquias Montoya, an artist from California.

Texas Moratorium Network announces a call to artists for an international, juried all-media art
competition and exhibition on the death penalty entitled: "Justice for All?: Artists Reflect on the Death Penalty". We hope to have a diverse group of artists from many part of the U.S. and other countries represented. Please forward this message to artists, arts groups, non-profit organizations, schools, art
students and your friends.

We are organizing this art show to foster the creation of new artwork on the death penalty, to
celebrate artwork that may already have been created and to encourage and enhance civic
engagement and dialogue about the death penalty.

Democracy is animated when an informed public is engaged in the issues of the day. We hope this art
show will reach new and diverse participants and audiences and will stimulate public dialogue about
this contemporary social issue and inspire action to make change. Art is a wonderful medium for the
transformation and awareness of the world.

We welcome submissions from artists who engage
the issue from all sides.

"Justice for All?: Artists Reflect on the Death
Penalty" will be held May 6-22, 2006 in Austin, Texas at Gallery Lombardi.

Eligibility: All artists, living anywhere. Artwork must address issue of death penalty. Original
work - all media.

Deadline for submissions: March 20, 2006.

Opening Night Reception: May 6, 2006.

To submit visit: www.deathpenaltyartshow.org.

Jurors: We are very pleased to have Annette Carlozzi, Malaquias Montoya and Lora Reynolds as jurors.

• Annette Carlozzi is Curator of American and Contemporary Art at the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art at The University of
  Texas at Austin.
• Lora Reynolds is owner of Lora Reynolds Gallery in Austin, Texas.


• Malaquias Montoya is an artist and professor of art at the University of California, Davis. In January 2005, he brought his own works of art dealing with the death penalty to Austin’s Julia C. Butridge Gallery at the Dougherty Arts Center, in a show entitled "Premeditated: Meditations on Capital Punishment,
  Recent Works by Malaquias Montoya".

Entry fee: $15 for up to three images.

Prospectus available online at:

www.deathpenaltyartshow.org/prospectus.html.

Awards: The jury will select works for the following cash awards totaling $1,300: Best of Show - $500; Second Place - $250; Third Place - $175; Youth Award - $175; (2) Merit Awards - $50 each. Viewers' Choice Award - $100 (Viewers' Choice Award will be chosen by people who attend opening night of the exhibition at Gallery Lombardi on May 6). To be eligible for the Youth Award, artists must be 19 or younger.

Gallery Talk: Conducted by Annette Carlozzi, May 11, 2006 at 7 PM in Gallery Lombardi.

Death Penalty Issues Discussion Forum in the Gallery: Date and Time to be announced.

Questions? Contact us at info@deathpenaltyartshow.org or 512-302-6715.

This project is funded in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts.

Please write Governor Perry and members of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and urge them to stop the execution of Frances Newton scheduled for Wednesday September 14, 2005. The Austin Chronicle reports that Gov Perry has received more than 4,000 letters, faxes, e-mails, and postcards regarding Newton's impending execution. Please forward this email to your friends so that we can generate thousands of additional communications to Perry and the BPP.

In addition to emailing Perry
and the Board, you can leave him a phone message at: 512-463-2000, fax him at 512-463-1849 (his fax line is often busy, so just keep trying) or send postal letters addressed to: The Honorable Rick Perry, Office of the Governor, PO Box 12428, Austin, 78711-2428; and to Chairwoman Rissie Owens, Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, Executive Clemency Unit, PO Box 13401, Austin, 78711.

Frances has a very strong case for innocence. Read the Application for Commutation of Sentence (August 23, 2005) submitted to the Governor and the Board of Pardons and Paroles. It concludes, "Frances Newton is innocent, and she is not dangerous, and she therefore respectfully requests that this Board grant her request for a commutation of her death sentence". There is also a "Supplement to Clemency Petition" (August 26,
2005) which adds to the clemency petition above and that has many details about the second gun. Read a
letter from the parents of Adrian Newton and grandparents of Alton and Farrah. They
write, "We are writing to you to urge you to exercise your powers as Board members to recommend to Governor Perry that he commute Frances Newton’s sentence to life. We do not wish to see her executed on September 14, 2005".

Visit the website of the Committee to Free Frances Newton to stay informed about developments.