The Guardian – 500th execution in Texas stirs emotions for exonerated death row prisoner

A protest against the execution of Kimberly McCarthy outside the Huntsville unit of the Texas department of criminal justice. Photograph: David J. Phillip/AP

Wednesday 26 June 2013 20.36 EDT

When Texas crossed the gruesome milestone on Wednesday night by executing its 500th prisoner the news carried a particular punch for Anthony Graves. He could so easily have been one of them.

Two years ago he was exonerated and set free after spending 18 years in Texas prisons, most of that time on death row. His conviction for multiple murder was overturned after an appeals court learned that his case was riddled with problems including a co-defendant who admitted to lying about his involvement, prosecutors who had extracted false confessions and crucial testimony withheld from the defense.

Dallas Morning News – TEXAS VIEW: Texas’ grim death penalty milestone

Posted: Monday, June 24, 2013 5:00 am

BY: Dallas Morning News

Owing to its size and inclinations, Texas registers prodigious statistics, but none so bleak as what comes from the state’s pre-Civil War red-brick prison in Huntsville that houses the nation’s busiest execution chamber.

There, on Wednesday, Texas’ 500th execution since national reinstatement is set to be carried out. The life scheduled for termination belongs to Kimberly McCarthy, whose grisly murder of elderly neighbor Dorothy Booth of Lancaster brings the state to this grim milestone.

It’s one that no other state may ever touch. Virginia, second in terms of executions, is barely a fifth of the way there, and the pace of capital punishment has slowed nationwide, even in Texas.

Baltimore Sun Op-Ed – How the Death Penalty Will End: First Maryland, then the Nation

By Benjamin Todd Jealous3:31 p.m. EDT, June 2, 2013

The death penalty debate in Maryland is finally over. This spring’s decision by the General Assembly to replace the death penalty with life without parole was cemented last week, when right-wing activists failed to muster enough signatures to force the issue onto the ballot. We, the people of Maryland, have sent a clear and firm message: capital punishment belongs in our past, not our future.

In doing so, we have joined New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, Illinois and Connecticut as the sixth state in six years and 18th in the nation to abolish the death penalty. We have brought America one state closer to joining the rest of the Western world in putting capital punishment behind us once and for all.

The question in front of us is a simple one: where do we go from here? The answer is both clear and urgent. We must abolish the death penalty in America, and we must shift law enforcement resources toward proven crime-prevention strategies like community-oriented policing and more police on the streets.