A few years ago, then attorney general Janet Napolitano created
The Capital
Case Commission to study the death penalty in Arizona. The commission's report can
be found at
http://www.attorneygeneral.state.az.us/CCC/FinalReport.html. strikingly,
just about all of the reforms designed to try to "fix" the death penalty
process have not been implemented.
The
Citizens United Against the Death Penalty can be found at
www.cuadp.org. Abe Bonowitz is a long time
activist and his web site is most informative.
And speaking of informative,
The Death Penalty Information Center,
www.deathpenaltyinfo.org has
every statistic you could ever ask for. It keeps up to date on the status of
the death penalty in all 38 states which still kill its citizens and the
federal government. It has good reviews of issues such as clemency, the lack
of deterrence, innocence, race, juveniles and more. Current events are
covered as well.
The
Catholic church's web site,
www.cacp.org,
states "we cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing." Vatican documents
and catechism passages relating to the death penalty can be reviewed here.
Our sister organization, the Coalition of Arizonans Against the Death
Penalty can be found at
www.azabolitionist.org.
The
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty can be found at
www.ncadp.org. It includes a national
execution alert, a legislative action center and news center.
For an international perspective on the death penalty,
Amnesty
International's site is as
good as it gets. Check out
www.amnestyusa.org/abolish/ for information about Amnesty's program to
abolish the death penalty. Action alerts, facts and figures, questions and
answers and AI reports can also be found there.
California's group is
The Death Penalty Focus and can be found at
www.deathpenalty.org. i wish we had
mike farrel as president of our group. in any event, they are doing great
work in California and their web site provides a wealth of information on the
abolition movement in our sister state.
Rick Halperin, another longtime nationally known human rights activist maintains a web site
at
http://people.smu.edu/rhalperi/.
called death penalty news and updates, he provides updates on death penalty
issues, a list of pending executions, urgent action alerts, and more.
No list would be complete without including the
Southern Center for Human
Rights,
www.schr.org. they have done so
much on death penalty issues in the deep south were the problems are so
severe. led by steven bright, one of the most prominent human rights
activists in the country, the center was founded in 1976 to respond the
deplorable conditions of prisons and jails in the south. since then it has
engaged in litigation and public advocacy on a number of issues especially
related to the death penalty.
For folks interested in the Arizona prison system, check out the
Arizona
Citizens for Effective Government web site at
www.azceg.org. It has information relating to conditions of
confinement, re-entry programs, legislation related to prisons, prisoners
and more.
Other sites include:
ABA Death Penalty
Representation Project - a Web site with a public page describing the
Project's primary goal to recruit law firms to represent death sentenced
prisoners; the site includes a password protected area limited to lawyers
representing individuals facing the death penalty.
Center
on Wrongful Convictions - dedicated to identifying and rectifying
wrongful convictions and other serious miscarriages of justice. The Center
investigates possible wrongful convictions and represent imprisoned clients
with claims of actual innocence.
The Justice Project -The
Justice Project is committed to educating the American public about our
deeply flawed capital justice system
Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation
-a national organization comprised of family members of murder victims and
family members of those who have been executed. Advocates alternatives to
the death penalty, crime prevention programs and supports programs to
address the needs of victims of violence.