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February 8, 2010

Attorney David Dow has made a career out of defending death row inmates in Texas — a state that boasts the highest number of death row executions nation-wide since 1976.

In the last twenty years, Dow has defended over 100 inmates sentenced to death. Many of his clients have died — most of them were guilty — but Dow says they should have been sentenced to life in prison instead of death at the hands of the state.

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By Frank Green
Published: February 9, 2010

Lorraine Reed Whoberry would like to meet Paul Warner Powell, the man who murdered one of her two daughters and raped the other, before his March 18 execution date.

"The only thing that I've ever asked from him is to show me remorse, and the only way I'm going to know that he's being sincere and honest is by his actions and his eyes," Whoberry said in a phone interview yesterday.

She says the Virginia Department of Corrections has turned down "numerous" requests to meet with Powell.

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By Staff Reports
Published: February 6, 2010

This week the House of Delegates approved expanding the death penalty by passing the so-called triggerman bill. We support capital punishment, but consider the legislation not only unwarranted but gratuitous. The House also passed a bill to apply the death penalty for "the willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing" of an EMT "when such killing is for the purpose of interfering with the performance of his official duties." We admire EMTs, and we suspect the bill's enthusiasts can summon pleasing arguments in favor of their position, but this, too, strikes us as unwarranted and gratuitous. We are not aware of a surge in killings of EMTs that might justify such a step. And as valuable to society as emergency personnel might be, are their deaths in the line of duty different from the deaths of, say, pharmacists, teachers, pilots, or, for that matter, any law-abiding citizen?

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