Mumia Abu-Jamal is an American political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. While on death row, he has written and commented on the criminal justice system in the United States. After numerous appeals, his death penalty sentence was overturned by a federal court. In 2011, the prosecution agreed to a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. He entered the general prison population early the following year.
Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, a women's prison in the town of Bedford, New York, is the largest New York State women's prison. The prison previously opened under the name Westfield State Farm in 1901. It lies just outside the hamlet and census-designated place Bedford Hills, New York.
Parole is a form of early release of a prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated parole officers, or else they may be rearrested and returned to prison.
In the United States, capital punishment is a legal penalty throughout the country at the federal level, in 27 states, and in American Samoa. It is also a legal penalty for some military offenses. Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 states and in the federal capital, Washington, D.C. It is usually applied for only the most serious crimes, such as aggravated murder. Although it is a legal penalty in 27 states, 19 states currently have the ability to execute death sentences, with the other 7, as well as the federal government and military, being subject to different types of moratoriums.
The year and a day rule is associated with the former common law standard that death could not be legally attributed to acts or omissions that occurred more than a year and a day before the death.
Capital punishment in India is a legal penalty for some crimes under the country's main substantive penal legislation, the Indian Penal Code, as well as other laws. Executions are carried out by hanging as the primary method of execution per Section 354(5) of the Criminal Code of Procedure, 1973 is "Hanging by the neck until dead", and is imposed only in the 'rarest of cases'.
The People of the State of California v. Robert Page Anderson, 493 P.2d 880, 6 Cal. 3d 628, was a landmark case in the state of California that outlawed capital punishment for nine months until the enactment of a constitutional amendment reinstating it, Proposition 17.
Utah State Prison (USP) was one of two prisons managed by the Utah Department of Corrections' Division of Institutional Operations. It was located in Draper, Utah, United States, about 20 miles (32 km) southwest of Salt Lake City. It was replaced by the Utah State Correctional Facility in July 2022.
Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U.S. 407 (2008), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which held that the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause prohibits the imposition of the death penalty for a crime in which the victim did not die and the victim's death was not intended.
In the United States, life imprisonment is the most severe punishment provided by law in states with no valid capital punishment statute, and second-most in those with a valid statute. According to a 2013 study, 1 of every 2 000 inhabitants of the U.S. were imprisoned for life as of 2012.
Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U.S. 130 (1879), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court affirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Utah in stating that execution by firing squad, as prescribed by the Utah territorial statute, was not cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: "[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb..." The four essential protections included are prohibitions against, for the same offense:
United States v. Johnson, 529 U.S. 53 (2000), was a United States Supreme Court case.
On March 19, 1906, Ed Johnson, a young African American man, was murdered by a lynch mob in his home town of Chattanooga, Tennessee. He had been wrongfully sentenced to death for the rape of Nevada Taylor, but Justice John Marshall Harlan of the United States Supreme Court had issued a stay of execution. To prevent delay or avoidance of execution, a mob broke into the jail where Johnson was held, and abducted and lynched him from the Walnut Street Bridge.
The innocent prisoner's dilemma, or parole deal, is a detrimental effect of a legal system in which admission of guilt can result in reduced sentences or early parole. When an innocent person is wrongly convicted of a crime, legal systems which need the individual to admit guilt — as, for example, a prerequisite step leading to parole — punish an innocent person for their integrity, and reward a person lacking in integrity. There have been cases where innocent prisoners were given the choice between freedom, in exchange for claiming guilt, and remaining imprisoned and telling the truth. Individuals have died in prison rather than admit to crimes that they did not commit.
United States Supreme Court cases titled Williams v. Taylor:
Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. 190 (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that its previous ruling in Miller v. Alabama (2012), that a mandatory life sentence without parole should not apply to persons convicted of murder committed as juveniles, should be applied retroactively. This decision potentially affects up to 2,300 cases nationwide.
Lankford v. Idaho, 500 U.S. 110 (1991), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the petitioner, Bryan Lankford, had been unconstitutionally sentenced to death in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court held 5–4 that Lankford had not received adequate notice that he could be sentenced to death before the trial judge imposed such a sentence on him, and therefore reversed the prior ruling to the contrary by the Idaho Supreme Court.
Schriro v. Landrigan, 550 U.S. 465 (2007), was a United States Supreme Court case decided on May 14, 2007. In a 5–4 decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court held that the District Court had not abused its discretion when it refused to grant an evidentiary hearing to convicted murderer Jeffrey Timothy Landrigan. In doing so, the Supreme Court also reversed the prior ruling to the contrary by the en banc United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which had held that Landrigan was entitled to habeas relief on the grounds that he had received ineffective assistance of counsel. The latter court had also held that the District Court's denial of such a hearing to Landrigan amounted to an "unreasonable determination of the facts", which is one of the two circumstances under which the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 permits the granting of federal habeas relief to state prisoners. The Supreme Court's decision also found that a criminal defendant could waive the right for their lawyer to present mitigating evidence on their behalf, and that such a waiver did not have to be "knowing and intelligent" in order to be valid, even in a capital case.
Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362 (2000), was a United States Supreme Court case decided on April 18, 2000. It concerned a federal habeas corpus petition brought by convicted murderer Terry Williams, who alleged that he had received ineffective assistance of counsel in violation of the Supreme Court's prior decision in Strickland v. Washington. The Supreme Court's decision in this case was split across two majority opinions, one authored by John Paul Stevens and joined by five other justices, and the other authored by Sandra Day O'Connor and joined by four other justices.
