Killing state capital punishment

Graveyard & Deathsource: Socialist Worker
published: 29 April 2015

Officials in Oklahoma and other states are scrambling to figure out a way to kill people. Concerned over a lack of access to lethal injection drugs, the Oklahoma legislature passed a bill in late April approving the use of the gas chamber for executions.

This comes on the heels of Utah’s move in March to bring back the firing squad as an alternative to lethal injection, an announcement that spurred another round of debate about executions. While the Denver Post editorial board wrote that the firing squad was “not a solution,” a Bloomberg editorial titled “Death by firing squad is more humane than lethal injection” circulated widely.

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If we can’t prevent wrongful convictions, can we at least pay for them?

Glenn Ford
Glenn Ford

source: NYTimes.com
published: 9 April 2015

A few weeks ago, a former prosecutor in Caddo Parish, La., named A. M. Stroud III wrote a letter to the editor of The Shreveport Times that quickly caught fire on the Internet.

Over more than 1,400 anguished words, Stroud apologized for his leading role in the 1984 trial of Glenn Ford, a Louisiana man who was convicted of murder and spent nearly 30 years on death row in Angola, the state’s maximum-security prison, until last year, when his conviction was overturned and he was released.

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Kingsley Burrell inquest: ‘A naughty policeman hit daddy’

Kingsley Burrell
Kingsley Burrell

source: The Voice Online
published: 7 April 2015

An inquest into the death of Kingsley Burrell, who died following contact with police in March 2011, heard how his four-year-old son told his family “a naughty black policeman hit daddy in the back of the ambulance.”

Little Kayden Burrell was with his 29-year-old father when he was taken by ambulance to a Birmingham mental health unit. Kingsley had called 999 for help because he feared he was about to be shot as he visited a local shop with his little boy.

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