Weekly Report from the Board Meeting at Holman Prison, 7.30.2014.

Top of our agenda was of course the botched execution in Arizona and the flood of articles weighing in on this. We heard from the U.K. that it made the headlines. One of the interesting fallouts was the statement by Arizona Senator McCain, himself a victim of torture in Vietnam, that this execution was torture. The importance of his statement cannot be underestimated because McCain is for the death penalty.

               Weekly Report from the Board Meeting at Holman Prison, 7.23.2014.

This is the reply our German Advisory Board member Ursula Malchau received in response to her letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. We appreciate and thank Ursula for her activism!

Dear Mrs. Malchau,
 
Thank you for your letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel written on behalf of the organization "Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty" which addressed the issue of the death penalty in the United States and the stand of the German federal government.

               Weekly Report from the Board Meeting at Holman Prison, 7.9.2014.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon recently called on all nations to take concrete steps toward ending the death penalty. In his opening remarks at an event co-sponsored by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Ban said, "Together, we can finally end this cruel and inhumane practice everywhere around the world." He noted that "more than four out of five countries — an estimated 160 Member States — have either abolished the death penalty or do not practice it."

               Weekly Report from the Board Meeting at Holman Prison, 7.2.2014.

June 30, 2014
Senator Cam Ward
Chairperson
Senate Judiciary Committee
201 1st St. N.
Alabaster, AL 35007

Dear Senator Ward,

Why does Alabama take forever to stand-up and change moral injustices?

               Weekly Report from the Board Meeting at Holman Prison, 6.25.2014.

Today we discussed arbitrariness in sentencing prompted by a recent study which reached the conclusion that almost all recently executed inmates possessed the qualities of those spared. The authors concluded that a more comprehensive study needs to be done in order to highlight the failings of mitigation and its implication for the constitutionality of the death penalty.

               Weekly Report from the Board Meeting at Holman Prison, 6.18.2014.

We discussed the sad news of the executions which took place yesterday evening in Georgia and Missouri. Nationally they were the first executions since the botched execution in Oklahoma. In Georgia it marked the first execution with new secret source of injection drugs. Lawyers were unsuccessful in arguing that the secrecy amounted to a violation of client’s civil rights.

Questioning Authority: Speak Up

          Weekly Report from the Board Meeting at Holman Prison, 6.11.2014.