NY Times Op-Ed: Pennsylvania’s Broken Machinery of Death

Published: September 13, 2012

Pennsylvania is scheduled to execute Terrance Williams on Oct. 3. The state has sentenced more than 400 people to death since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976 and has executed three who gave up on their appeals. But he would be the first person in 50 years to be put to death there while still fighting his sentence.

That should not happen. On Friday in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, Mr. Williams’s lawyers are scheduled to explain why a state trial judge should stay his execution and why the Philadelphia district attorney should agree that his sentence be commuted to life without parole. There is compelling evidence for both.

Wash. Post – New prosecutor appointed in case of Justin Michael Wolfe, charged in murder-for-hire case

By Jeremy Borden and Josh White

A Prince William County judge has appointed a new prosecutor in the case of a man who has spent most of the past 11 years on Virginia’s death row and whose murder-for-hire and drug convictions were overturned in federal court.

Ray Morrogh, Fairfax County’s top prosecutor, will take over the case against Justin Michael Wolfe, according to Prince William Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul B. Ebert.

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Va. prosecutor preparing to retry man whose death penalty conviction was overturned

By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, September 10, 11:38 AM

MANASSAS, Va. — A Prince William County prosecutor says his office is preparing to retry a former death row inmate whose conviction was overturned on accusations of government misconduct.

Justin Wolfe was recently released from Virginia’s death row and transferred to the Manassas jail. He had been sentenced to death for a drug-related slaying in 2001.

Earlier this year, though, a federal judge tossed out his conviction and death sentence. A federal appeals court said prosecutors wrongly withheld information from Wolfe’s lawyers that would have helped him at trial.