In December, readers and individual board members of several of the organizations in the US abolitionist movement had signed--without their full boards’ or their memberships’ knowledge--a “confidential” memorandum, which they then sent to the French organizers of the World Congress Against the Death Penalty, stating bluntly that, “As international representatives of the US abolition movement, we cannot agree to the involvement of Abu-Jamal or his lawyers in the World Congress beyond attendance.”

ThisCantBeHappening! this past week obtained a copy of that secret memorandum.

Juan Melendez-Colon spent 17 years, 8 months and 1 day on death row for a crime he did not commit. He will be sharing his story as part of a larger discussion on the death penalty and the criminal justice system on Wednesday, April 14th at 7pm at the First Unitarian Church in downtown Portland. Please join us and bring your family and friends.

by Rachel Clarke, published to the Open Publishing Newswire:Hank Skinner was set to be executed on March 24th at 6pm. Skinner has maintained his innocence for the last 16 years. At the ninth hour, the United States Supreme Court issued a stay so that they could look further into Skinner's sub-petition regarding DNA Testing. Supporters and Abolitionists after celebrating and putting the word out, still caravaned to the Wahls Unit for a celebratory demonstration in the hopes that Hank would hear.

HIMC Coverage: Audio: Highlights from the Skinner Stay Demonstration | Will Governor Perry Execute Another Innocent Man? | KPFT Local News Coverage of the Hank Skinner Case
HIMC Feature: 2/16 Will Texas Soon Execute Another Innocent Man? The Case of Hank Skinner

Marvin Reeves (pictured on left) and Mark Clements (right) visited Champaign-Urbana on Wednesday night, Feb. 24, 2010. They spoke on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and on the topic of "Lynching Then/Lynching Now" as part of a national tour sponsored by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. An audience of some 60 people filled a room in Gregory Hall.

Freed from prison in October 2009 after 21 years, Marvin Reeves spoke about how he was framed for murder by the testimony of an inmate in jail for burglary. His co-defendant Ronnie Kitchen made a false confession after being tortured by Sgt. Jon Burge of the Chicago Police Department. Reeves has since been awarded approximately $200,000 as compensation.

Mark Clements was sentenced to life without parole as a juvenile and was released in August 2009 after serving 28 years in prison. He spoke about the need to end the harsh penalities handed out to juveniles. He was also tortured into making a false confession by Chicago police who later worked alongside Sgt. Burge.

Hank Skinner has been on death row for the last 15 years after being convicted of killing his life partner and her two adult disabled children. As the execution date quickly approaches, a number of questions still remain. Questions that could be easily cleared up with DNA testing that the state so far has refused to grant. Dr. Protess, a professor at Northwest University, shares more about the doubts and unanswered questions that linger and makes a direct plea to Governor Perry to save Skinner's life...

Texas continues to lead the nation in executions. But will the state earn the dubious distinction of executing five innocents in two decades? Hank Skinner’s fate lies in the hands of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, Gov. Perry and the U.S. Supreme Court. Read More | Petition to Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles

Despite a U.S. Supreme Court ban, Texas has continued to send mentally retarded criminals to death row. Will a Mexican immigrant's case correct this injustice?
In 2002, six years after Daniel Plata landed on Death Row, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case called Atkins v. Virginia that “executions of mentally retarded criminals are cruel and unusual.” Even though mentally disabled people can understand the difference between right and wrong, the court reasoned that they are less able to control impulsive behavior or learn from mistakes. The court supported its decision by pointing to bans on executing the mentally retarded in 17 states and in federal cases as “evolving standards of decency.”

BREAKING: Gerald Eldridge's execution has been stayed pending further psychiatric examinations.

Texas is set to execute three people in three days starting today, November 17. The first is Gerald Cornelius Eldridge, who is mentally ill and has an IQ of 72. Eldridge, 45, was sentenced to death for the 1993 shooting deaths of his former girlfriend, Cynthia Bogany and her nine-year old daughter Chirissa in Houston.

The second is a man named Danielle Simpson, sentenced to death for the murder of 84-year old Geraldine Davidson. On Thursday, Robert Thompson is scheduled for execution. He was convicted and sentenced to death under the Law of Parties, even though it was his accomplice who fired the bullet that killed the victim. The accomplice was sentenced to life.

Call Governor Perry at 512 463 1782 to protest these executions or contact Perry by email through his website [Read full story]

Related: If you hire a lawyer, the chances are you won't be sentenced to death in Houston. University of Denver Criminologist Scott Phillips reviewed 504 capital indictments over three decades in Harris County, Texas, and found that defendants who hired lawyers for the entire trial were never sentenced to death -- and were more likely to be acquitted. [Read full story]

On Sunday, November 8, the SF Bay Area Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal organized an event at Centro Del Pueblo in San Francisco. The event focused on three innocent men who may soon be executed soon, depending on upcoming court rulings: Troy Davis, Kevin Cooper, and Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Pennsylvania prosecutors, twice rejected in their efforts to impose the death penalty on Mumia (in 2001 and 2008), may have found new support in the U.S. Supreme Court. It appears that the court’s delay in ruling on the validity of Mumia’s original execution sentence was due to its decision to grant oral arguments in the Ohio case of Smith v. Spisak, a case that might re-write or reinterpret the nation’s laws to make it easier to obtain jury verdicts calling for execution. The Court heard Ohio prosecutor’s arguments for Spisak’s execution on October 13, 2009. A ruling is expected in the year ahead. Read More

RELATED: Legal Intelligencer series about Mumia: April 7 | October 12 | October 14 | | | Munich City Council Passes Resolution for Mumia Abu-Jamal | | | NOVEMBER 12! COME TO WASHINGTON TO DEMAND CIVIL RIGHTS FOR MUMIA!

Each October since 2000, people from all walks of life and all parts of Texas, the U.S. and other countries have taken a day out of their year and gathered in Texas to raise their voices together and loudly express their opposition to the death penalty. The march is a coming together of activists, family members of those on death row, community leaders, exonerated prisoners and all those calling for abolition. The march started in Austin in 2000. In 2007 and 2008, the march was held in Houston (Houston Indymedia Coverage from 2008, 2007). This year, it is came back to Austin.

The Chicago Tribune is breaking the story that the investigator for the Texas Forensic Science Commission is going to report that the fire for which Cameron Todd Willingham was sentenced to death for setting to murder his children was an accidental fire and not arson. Willingham always maintained his innocence. He was executed for arson/murder in 2004. If the TFSC takes the investigator's report and accepts his conclusions then it could acknowledge in its own report that Texas has executed an innocent person. The State of Texas should halt executions in light of the news that the investigator hired by the Texas Forensic Science Commission has concluded that the fire in the Cameron Todd Willingham case was accidental and not arson.

"Texas Moratorium Network has been warning for many years that Texas runs the risk of executing an innocent person because of the pace of executions in Texas and the many flaws in the system that can lead to innocent people being wrongfully convicted. Innocent people have been released from Texas death row in the past, including Ernest Willis. It is too late to release Todd Willingham because Texas already executed him in 2004 for supposedly setting a fire to murder his three children. Today's news that the fire in the Willingham case was not arson means that Texas has moved another step closer to having to face the unspeakable horror that it has executed an innocent person", said Scott Cobb, president of Texas Moratorium Network.

The Chicago Tribune first reported on Willingham's possible innocence in 2004 and followed up in 2006. [Read full article with letter to Rick Perrey from Willingham family]

On August 17, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a hearing on the innocence claim of death row prisoner Troy Anthony Davis. For years, courts have shown little interest in establishing Troy Davis' innocence, asserting that it was legally irrelevant as he had exhausted his appeals. But now Supreme Court justices have declared that "The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing." Read More | Capital Defense Weekly blog | TroyAnthonyDavis.org | Previous Indybay Feature: Global Day of Action for Death Row Inmate Troy Davis

On August 17, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a hearing on the innocence claim of death row prisoner Troy Anthony Davis. For years, courts have shown little interest in establishing Troy Davis' innocence, asserting that it was legally irrelevant as he had exhausted his appeals. But now Supreme Court justices have declared that "The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing."

In 1991 Davis was convicted for the 1989 killing of an off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail. There is no physical evidence tying Davis to the crime scene and seven out of the nine non-police witnesses have since recanted or altered their initial testimonies. Others have implicated the prosecution"s key remaining witnesses as the actual perpetrator of the crime.

Read More: 1 | 2 | Capital Defense Weekly blog | TroyAnthonyDavis.org

Related: Texas Executed an Innocent Person: Cameron Todd Willingham

Previous Coverage — May09 Day of Action: Philadelphia, PA | Rochester, NY | San Francisco, CA | | | Nov08: Peoples Pressure granted Troy Davis Oral Argument before the 11th circuit of Appeals | | | Oct08: Troy Davis, Political Prisoner on Death Row | Troy Davis gets another stay of execution| Troy Davis and Bobby Woods Executions Stopped! Abolition Activists to March in Houston Sat, Oct 25 | Global Day of Action Planned to Stop Execution of Troy Davis | Two Victories for Advocates of Life | | | Sept08: Call to Stop the Sept 23 Execution of Troy Davis

From Death Row at San Quentin, Donald Ray Young writes: "We had strange fruit for breakfast today...a death row prisoner committed suicide at San Quentin, in East Block. But, I can't worry about that guy....Wait; how can I not think of the suicide in this very building - - his family...loved ones? What if he was innocent? Do I know him? How many other people on death row have contemplated killing themselves to escape this madness? I believe that when one dies - - a part of all of us all dies...."

On May 26, the UN Human Rights Council issued a report titled "Promotion and Protection of All Human Rights, Civil, Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Including the Right to Development - Report of the Special Rapporteur (Philip Alston) on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions." Alston was damning in his criticism regarding "three areas in which significant improvement is necessary if the US Government is to match its actions to its stated commitment to human rights and the rule of law:"