Three Executions Scheduled in Three Days, Despite Nationwide Shift Away From the Death Penalty

Three executions are scheduled within a three-day period Wednesday, Dec. 1, through Friday, Dec. 3, even as reasonable doubts continue to surface surrounding the accuracy and fairness of the death penalty in the United States. Even as a number of states prepare to debate moratoria and other death-penalty reforms in 2005, executions are scheduled this week in Texas, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Two of the people scheduled for executions have innocence claims; a third is severely mentally ill and thinks he has been granted a reprieve by God. "It does not make sense to proceed with these executions -- particularly with the facts presented -- at a time when the American public is expressing deep ambivalence about the fairness of the death penalty," said Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "Death sentences are sharply on the decline, death row populations are dropping and the number of executions recorded in 2004 is at its lowest point since 1996. Yet these states plan to proceed with the execution of two possibly innocent people and a third person who medical experts have found to be severely mentally ill. There is a real disconnect happening in this country between what the American people are saying about the death penalty and the death penalty machinery." [more]

• Charles Walker, North Carolina, Friday, Dec. 3
• George Banks, Pennsylvania, Thursday, Dec. 2.
  
• Frances Newton, Texas, Wednesday, Dec. 1.