Capital Punishment

4WardEverUK

Voices from the criminal injustice system : ‘I am Troy Davis’

Troy Davis
Troy Davis

originally by: Workers World
published: 18 December 2019

A sold-out crowd at Rattlesticks Theater in the West Village on Dec. 8 heard readings from the book “I Am Troy Davis,” which features the stories of dozens of people whose lives have been cruelly affected by the state and its racist criminal injustice system. 

Troy Davis, an African-American man accused of killing a cop, was executed in Georgia on Sept. 21, 2011, despite seven of nine witnesses recanting their trial testimony and a mountain of uncovered evidence proving his innocence.

The book was written by Davis’ sister, Martina Davis Correia, and Jen Marlow. Correia, who died after a long battle with cancer, fought with every fiber of her body over several decades to prove her brother’s innocence and to stop his execution.

Continue reading

4WardEverUK

Film-making pair team up to tell British woman’s story [Ruth Ellis]

Ruth Ellis
Ruth Ellis

source: Rome Sentinel
published: 9 November 2019

She was the last woman hanged in Great Britain after being convicted of shooting her lover to death. And a director/producer in Los Angeles, originally from Rome, and a cameraman/videographer from Barneveld, are teaming up to tell her story.

Peter-Henry Schroeder, owner and operator of PHS Productions, owes his acting roots to his mother Marie Angotti-Schroeder, who while living in Syracuse, enrolled her sons and daughter in the Syracuse Children’s Theatre, which continues today.

While his two brothers pursued other avenues, Peter-Henry and sister Maria Curley, continued with their passions for the performing arts. Curley is the co-founder of Present Company Productions, an Oneida-based theater company that produces, among its projects, dinner theater at Theodore’s Restaurant in Canastota.

Continue reading

4WardEverUK

Capital punishment is a gross injustice in America

Prisoner In Jailsource: The Emory Wheel
published: 8 October 2019

The American justice system should be on death row. With each day that innocent people await execution for crimes they did not commit, the very institutions meant to ensure justice become engines of inequality and inhumanity.

Rodney Reed, who maintains his innocence to this day, is scheduled to be executed by the state of Texas on Nov. 20, 2019 for the rape and murder of Stacey Stites in 1996. His case proves the sheer inadequacy of capital punishment in the United States, and his state-sanctioned death would further erode a system that has been injected with injustice. It’s long past time for Texas to set Reed free and for the U.S. to abolish the death penalty..

Continue reading