News Update 4.27.07
North Carolina
The Greensboro News-Record recommends a ‘lethal rejection’ of the death penalty. Legislators should order a real examination of the medical issues underlying lethal injection, and if it can’t be fixed, it should be abandoned.
In Raleigh yesterday, the families of murder victims called on legislators to abolish the death penalty. “As long as we support executions in our state,” said a woman whose brother was killed, “we’re using the same tactics that the murderers are using.”
Love Lived on Death Row, the critically acclaimed documentary film about the children of Elias Syriani will be screened in Greensboro (May 14, Temple Emanuel, 7 PM) and Durham (May 16, Richard White Auditorium at Duke, 7 PM) next month. Elias Syriani murdered his wife, the children’s mother, in 1990 and was sentenced to death. In time, the children came to forgive their father, and they begged the state of North Carolina to spare his life. The film documents their remarkable journey of healing and forgiveness. Elias Syriani was executed in 2005, his children made orphans again. View the trailer here.
The Innocence Project finds another wrongful conviction in Winston-Salem. This time, police withheld part of a videotape showing an assault victim picking her attacker out of a photo lineup – and it’s not the man who has spent a decade in prison for the crime.
Elsewhere
The recent killing of a state trooper in New York has spurred calls for expanding the death penalty in that state. New York hasn’t executed anyone since 1963, and there is currently only one person on the state’s death row.
The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has launched a new site – InnocentandExecuted.org – to tell the stories of four men who died for crimes they likely did not commit. Rubin Cantu, Carlos DeLuna, and Todd Willingham were killed by Texas. Larry Griffin was killed by Missouri.
Posted by deathwatch 
