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The Death Penalty Nationwide
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Wednesday, 16 November 2011 |
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Into the Abyss -- Dir. Werner Herzog (IFC Films) -- 4.5 Stars
Published: Tuesday, November 15, 2011
 COURTESY IFC FILMS
Werner Herzog’s new documentary “Into the Abyss”
explores the American institution of capital punishment by following the
story of one death row inmate, Michael Perry.
As eerie flutes and strings float in the background, Werner Herzog is
driving through a foreign land: Texas. Herzog has long been known for
his work in exotic locales, which includes the Antarctica-centered
documentary “Encounters at the End of the World” and the South American
epics “Aguirre: The Wrath of God” and “Fitzcarraldo.” With “Into the
Abyss,” he now moves through the brush-lined roads of the Lone Star
state and its many drawling denizens in order to understand better the
movers and actors surrounding American capital punishment. While Herzog
makes it clear in the film’s first few minutes that he does not support
the death penalty, “Into the Abyss” is not a political film so much as a
story with understated political implications. With the steady and
practiced hand of an expert documentary filmmaker, Herzog straps the
issue to the gurney and injects the stories of murderer, victim, family,
executor, law, and lover to create a nuanced picture of cyclical
senselessness in capital punishment.
Full Review >>
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Death Penalty Cases in Virginia
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Saturday, 12 November 2011 |
Credit: Police mugshot
Justin
Wolfe has been on death row since 2002, convicted in a murder-for-hire
case involving a high-end northern Virginia drug ring.
By: The Associated Press
Published: November 10, 2011
Updated: November 10, 2011 - 10:07 PM
NORFLOK, Va. --
A federal judge is
considering whether a man whose murder conviction he overturned should
be released from prison while state officials appeal his ruling.
U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson of Norfolk ruled in July that
Justin Michael Wolfe was wrongfully convicted in the 2001 death of
21-year-old Daniel Petrole Jr. in Prince William County. Wolfe claimed
that the shooter, Owen Barber IV, acted alone.
Jackson said prosecutors erred in using testimony from the shooter,
who said Wolfe paid him to kill his marijuana supplier, Daniel Petrole,
in Bristow. He later recanted.
Full story >>
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The Death Penalty Nationwide
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Thursday, 10 November 2011 |
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- source: Death Penalty Information Center
John Garvey, president of the Catholic
University of America, recently discussed the evolution of Catholic
teaching on capital punishment. Garvey said that while early Catholic
Church leaders supported the use of the death penalty, the prevailing
contemporary teaching on the subject clearly calls for "condemnation of
executions." Reflecting on the recent executions of Lawrence Brewer in Texas and Troy Davis in Georgia,
Garvey wrote, “The church’s clear contemporary teaching is that Texas
and Georgia should do so only if it was necessary to protect their
people from further attacks. Given the quality of the state prison
systems, it’s hard to make that claim.” Garvey stated that the Church
urges Catholics to resist the urge to seek revenge: “The reason isn’t
just that we might make a mistake, though we might. The reason is that
human life is sacred because it results from the creative action of God.
It is not our place to destroy it, though that might satisfy our desire
for revenge.”
Read full op-ed >>
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The Death Penalty Nationwide
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Monday, 07 November 2011 |
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Patrick Burns/The New York TimesA
view to the execution chamber at Sing Sing, where Lewis E. Lawes, the
warden from 1920 to 1941, saw to 303 executions, even as he denounced
capital punishment.
 The New York TimesLewis E. Lawes
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Nobody killed more people, with more regret, than Lewis E. Lawes.
The
warden of the Sing Sing Correctional Facility for 21 years, Lawes
supervised the executions of 303 prisoners, all the while condemning the
practice of capital punishment as barbaric, inequitable and futile.
As
Hollywood’s favorite “fearless, fighting warden,” with a soft heart for
his “boys,” Lawes was in charge of the prison through two turbulent
decades, from the Jazz Age and the Great Depression to World War II.
“I shall ask for the abolition of the Penalty of Death,” he wrote in
1923, quoting Lafayette, “until I have the infallibility of human
judgment demonstrated to me.”
Read More >>
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