Equal Justice Initiative

Mississippi Supreme Court Presiding Justice Hon. Oliver E. Diaz Jr. last week in a dissenting opinion joined by Justice Graves held that the death penalty is unconstitutional.

Like United States Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens's opinion finding capital punishment unconstitutional in Baze v. Rees earlier this year, Justice Diaz reasoned that none of the justifications for capital punishment is a sufficient reason to continue to use the death penalty today.

In an address to the Prison Reform Trust in London on December 8, 2008, EJI Director Bryan Stevenson warned that building American-style prisons to warehouse thousands of prisoners could fatally undermine the British justice system’s ability to cut crime by reforming offenders and instead set England and Wales on a fast-track to a damaging and discredited prison system.

In the next five months, Alabama seeks to execute an unprecedented number of people. The Alabama Supreme Court announced on December 3, 2008, that it has scheduled five executions for the first five months of 2009. If these executions are carried out, next year will see the most executions in Alabama in a single year since 1949.

The latest national Gallup poll on crime found that support for the death penalty in America is now at its lowest level in the past thirty years. From a high of 80% of Americans in favor of the death penalty in 1994, support dropped this year to 64%.

The Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment, appointed by Governor Martin O'Malley to examine the state's death penalty, concluded on November 12, 2008, that Maryland's capital punishment system is too costly, makes too many mistakes, and fails to deter crime.

Election Day brought significant change to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. Two new judges were elected, and a third seat opened up when current criminal appeals judge Greg Shaw was elected to the Alabama Supreme Court.

On October 31, 2008, Equal Justice Initiative attorneys filed a brief in the Alabama Supreme Court on behalf of Alabama death row inmate Michael Carruth, in which it argued that Mr. Carruth is entitled to an out-of-time appeal because the lawyer appointed to represent him on the appeal of his conviction failed to file a mandatory petition for review in the Alabama Supreme Court.

On October 21, 2008, EJI attorneys argued that the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals should order a new trial for death row prisoner David Wilson because the Houston County prosecutor at his trial illegally eliminated every black potential juror.

Racially discriminatory practices by Alabama prosecutors, including the elimination of African American jurors because they appeared to be of “low intelligence,” were examined by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta, Georgia, in oral argument on October 20, 2008. Bryan Stevenson argued on behalf of Earl McGahee, who was tried by an all-white jury in a majority-black county after the State excluded every African American from jury service.

On October 17, 2008, the Alabama Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in the case of Anthony Ray Hinton, who has spent over 20 years on Alabama's death row for crimes he did not commit. The court ruled that the case must be sent back to the trial court to make findings about whether Mr. Hinton received the expert assistance to which he was entitled.