The Past Year for Deadline and the Death Penalty
Hey blog community! Things have been busy here at Arts Engine. This year has been a great year for Deadline. The film was broadcast on The Sundance Channel, had screenings at Yale University, Colby College and Brown University and has some upcoming January air dates on Link TV. Also, Katy was asked to go to Bedford Hills Maximum Security Correctional Facility, a women's prison in upstate New York, to talk about Deadline and social justice media. It will be some time in April.
Our latest film, Arctic Son is doing the festival run and will be broadcast sometime in 2007. We also have been working on some exciting new films about election reform and a punk band in Chicago. You'll be hearing more about them soon!
We have taken the blog out of retirement because there has been a lot happening around the death penalty lately. We wanted to share it with you. It seems that the the number of death sentences has dropped to its lowest level in decades. This has a lot to do with the publicity surrounding wrongful conviction cases. We also know for a fact that it has a lot to do with the hard work of many of our partners.
Also, a legislative commission recommended on Tuesday that New Jersey become the first state to abolish the death penalty since states began reinstating their capital punishment laws 35 years ago. Its report found “no compelling evidence” that capital punishment serves a legitimate purpose, and increasing evidence that it “is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency.”
And one other news item that we never saw coming: Florida halts the death penalty:
Gov. Jeb Bush yesterday suspended all executions in Florida, citing a troubled execution on Wednesday and appointing a commission to consider the humanity and constitutionality of lethal injections.Gov. Jeb Bush is awaiting a commission’s report in March.
Hours later, a federal judge ruled that the lethal injection system in California violated the constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.“Today has been the most significant day in the history of the death penalty in America in many years,” said Jamie Fellner, director of United States programs for Human Rights Watch. “These developments show that the current lethal-injection protocols pose an unacceptable risk of cruelty.
All excerpts are from our friends at The New York Times.
If you want to get the latest updates on the death penalty, please check out our partner's website, The Death Penalty Information Center and join their mailing list. They had a great article about the recent declaration by The Federal Court that lethal injections in California are inconstitutional.
Posted by Angela at 10:19 AM
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