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  1. Clemency wells by E.Purdon BW

    SCOTUS Stays

    Clemency Wells on 12 April 2011

    Famous for dismissing, out of hand, capital cases that demonstrate even the most blatant miscarriages of justice, the Supreme Court of the United States has granted three stays of execution in the last few weeks.

    What is the message coming from on high?

    On March 21st the Supreme Court of the United States (this being the USA they of course have an acronym: SCOTUS, like POTUS) granted a stay of execution to Cory Maples, currently on death row in Alabama, and agreed to hear his appeal. The blue-chip law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, that was defending Maples, had failed to notify ...

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  2. Generic Front page - World map sepia

    AP report on secret prisons

    Donald Campbell on 11 April 2011

    AP recently reported on how people are still being held by the US military in secret prisons across Afghanistan.

    Although Barack Obama ordered the closure of CIA ‘black sites’ over two years ago, the US continues to run a network of highly secret prisons in Afghanistan in order to interrogate detainees.

    Reprieve’s secret prisons team is actively investigating detention sites in Afghanistan, Europe, Africa and beyond.

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  3. Ken Macdonald QC BW

    A message from Ken Macdonald QC

    Ken Macdonald QC on 08 April 2011

     

    I have recently joined Reprieve as its new Chair and I’m writing to thank you for supporting us over the years and helping us to shine the light of law into the darkest prisons.

    Thanks to Reprieve, 66 men are now at home with their families instead of languishing without charge in Guantánamo Bay, while over 300 prisoners have been spared execution in the United States and elsewhere around the world. That’s a remarkable track record – and a tribute to every person who works here. We won’t give up bringing daylight into prison cells.

    Reprieve is ...

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  4. Clemency wells by E.Purdon BW

    Love Lived on Death Row

    Clemency Wells on 07 April 2011

    “But, how do they justify that?” This was the question posed by a rather stricken law student after she had watched Love Lived on Death Row, about capital punishment in the USA.

    I attended the screening at the request of Abolition UK, a volunteer campaign group. Love Lived was a deeply moving film which showed in the most tragic of ways exactly how the death penalty does nothing other than cause pain to innocent family members and friends of a person sentenced to death. Love Lived told the story of the Syriani family in North Carolina.

    In 1990 Elias Syriani ...

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  5. Emmanuelle Purdon 2009 BW

    Cleve Foster set to die today

    Emmanuelle Purdon on 05 April 2011

    Watch Maya Foa explain the vital decision Reprieve expects manufacturer Lundbeck to make so no death row prisoner in the US is executed with an european drug.

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  6. Cortney Busch BW 2011

    20 year old notes detail Guantanamo abuse

    Cortney Busch on 31 March 2011

    Sometime in early 2002, the higher-ups at Guantánamo Bay decided to bring SERE instructors in to train interrogators stationed there. The aim was to teach them methods that could ‘break’ the detainees.

    What is SERE? It’s an acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training. It was started by the US Airforce in the 1950s in order to train soldiers to maintain ‘honour’ if and when they were captured by “Communist enemies”. It quickly spread to the Army and the Navy as well. Soldiers maintain their honour in captivity by ensuring they tell the enemy nothing more than name ...

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  7. Clemency wells by E.Purdon BW

    The tragic case of Daniel Cook, set to die in Arizona with experimental drugs

    Clemency Wells on 30 March 2011

    Despite the lead prosecutor on Daniel Cook’s case now saying that he would not have sought the death penalty had he known about the abuse and mental illness in his past, Daniel is scheduled to be killed on April 5th using experimental drugs. 

    On April 5th, 23 excruciating years after he was sentenced to death, Daniel Cook is due to be killed.  He will eat his last meal, he will be strapped to a gurney and then, when the time comes, he will be pumped full of enough drugs to slowly and painfully put him to death. 

    Sadly ...

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  8. Emmanuelle Purdon 2009 BW

    Lawyer's attempt to keep his head above water landed a client on death row

    Emmanuelle Purdon on 23 March 2011

    Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman needed a really good lawyer. Prosecutors claimed to have a mountain of physical evidence and powerful eyewitness testimony against him in a murder case. And they were seeking the death penalty.

    Cellmates at the Nashville jail where Abdur'Rahman was being held told him there was only one lawyer to call: Lionel Barrett.

    Barrett, they said, never turned down a client in need, no matter how controversial the case was, how bad the facts were and how impossible the defense seemed.

    "I never said no," Barrett confirms. "I took cases no one else would. Everyone deserves representation ...

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  9. Chai Patel

    Why North Carolina hasn’t scheduled an execution since 2006

    Chaitanya Patel on 23 March 2011

    In North Carolina the state Supreme Court was recently asked to consider whether or not a judge was correct to order state officials to revamp the protocol for executions in that state.

    Assistant Attorney General Joe Finarelli has argued that the judge had no right to do so because the Department of Corrections was exempt from the state law governing review of administrative procedures.

    Litigation about the protocol and about physician participation in executions has stopped executions in the state since 2006. If the state Supreme Court agrees, the case will go back to a lower court to review and ...

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  10. Katherine O'Shea BW

    Send a book to Linda Carty in Texas

    Katherine O'Shea on 17 March 2011

    Linda Carty is a British grandmother facing execution. She loves to read and was very pleased to receive books from Reprieve supporters when we posted a 'wish list' on our website earlier this year

    If anyone would like to send a book, please do send a title of your choice. Please note that books must be ordered at Amazon as this is the only way the prison will accept them in the post.

    Books should be sent to:

    Linda Carty, # 999406, Mountainview Unit, 2305 Ransom Rd, Gatesville, Texas 76528, USA

    Linda also welcomes supportive letters, which must include a return ...

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