death penalty news
August 10, 2005
USA / NEW YORK:
Death penalty's history housed at UAlbany library
During a taxi ride in 1983 in Washington, D.C., two men actively
involved in the national debate over the death penalty discussed strategy.
Except for a single private letter on the matter, the meeting between
Hugo Bedau, a scholar at Tufts University, and Ira Glasser, head of
the American Civil Liberties Union, there would be no record of the event.
That letter, part of the papers of Professor Bedau, is now in the
collection of the National Death Penalty Archive at the University at
Albany Libraries.
The archive is the only repository in the nation devoted solely to
the death penalty. It was established by the Capital Punishment
Research Initiative of the School of Criminal Justice of UAlbany.
The repository is a primary resource for students, scholars,
researchers, authors and others interested in the topic. "This is why
we have universities. This is why we are here," said Kermit Hall,
UAlbany president and a noted constitutional historian. "History is
the foundation of democracy."
UAlbany Prof. James Acker said the official opening of the archive is
especially timely. "This seems to be potentially a very interesting
time of change in this country," Acker said of the intensified debate
over the death penalty.
The U.S. leads the world in state-sanctioned deaths, Acker said: more
than 20,000 since colonial times and 1,000 since 1977.
The most serious action any state can take is to take the life of
another individual," Hall added.
Among the items in the archive are the testimonials of the families
of victims; the Capital Jury Project interviews with 1,200 jurors who
participated in trials involving the death penalty; the personal
legal papers of Alvin Ford, a Florida inmate who went insane while on
death row; and a collection of news coverage of death penalty issues
across the nation in the 1970s and 1980s.
The ink is barely dry on some of the pieces of history in the
archive. The collection includes the minutes and debate from 2005 of
three Assembly committees that considered whether to re-instate the
death penalty that was voided in 2004 by the state's highest court.
The Assembly did not vote on the issue and New York remains without a
death penalty.
Brian Keough, head of the Department of Special Collections and
Archives, said the death penalty collection is part of a larger
repository that includes about 25,000 cubic feet of temperature and
humidity-controlled shelving for such items as the records of the
Environmental Advocates (formerly the Environmental Planning Lobby),
the files of radio station WAMC, the personal papers of the late U.S.
Rep. Gerald Solomon, and the papers of Joseph Persico, a former press
aide to the late Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and later a noted author.
(source: Troy Record)
SOUTH CAROLINA:
Inmate faces death penalty
Prosecutors will seek the death penalty against an inmate charged
with murder in the stabbing of a fellow prisoner last month.
Kenneth Henry Justus, 38, was serving two consecutive life sentences
for killing Upstate store clerks during robberies nearly a decade ago
when investigators said he entered 22-year-old Justis Matthew
Bergenzer's cell at the Lieber Correctional Institution in Ridgeland
and stabbed him about 13 times in the head and chest with a homemade knife.
Prosecutor David Pascoe said those previous killings are why he plans
to serve a notice to seek the death penalty Thursday morning at the
Dorchester County courthouse.
No other inmate on South Carolina's death row was sentenced to die
for killing an inmate. One of South Carolina's most notorious
prisoners, serial killer Donald "Pee Wee" Gaskins, was put to death
in 1991 for a killing inside the prison walls. Gaskins also admitted
to killing 13 other people.
Corrections Department director Jon Ozmint said he wants Justus to be
sentenced to death as a deterrent to other inmates serving life sentences.
(source: AP / The State)
