Video Casefile

The View From the Death House

Over the years, the authors have had occasion to visit many death chambers around the country — thankfully, not when they were in use.  Here are two reports that bring you along on some of those travels.  The first is a look at the use of the electric chair, the second an inside view of Lousianna’s death house with Barbara Walters.

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Juvenile Killers

Who is too young to die for taking a life?

The Supreme Court first wrestled with that subject in 1988, deciding by a vote of 5 to 3 to spare the life of Wayne Thompson, who at the age of 15 had murdered his abusive brother-in-law.  Here is a look at that landmark case.

[myvideogall:Juvenile]Wayne Thompson

Seventeen years later, in 2005, the Court decided that a seventeen-year-old killer was too young to execute.  This, in spite of the fact that Christopher Simmons’  crime had been both brutal and cold-blooded.  This report includes Simmons’ chilling confession to the murder of a mother of two.

06-5 Simmons confesses ThmbnailChristopher Simmons

Getting Even

Retribution is often cited as a justification for capital punishment.  Some crimes seem to demand “an eye for an eye.”  But when the Court examined the death penalty of Patrick Kennedy, it determined that while his crime was awful — a child rape — he should not be punished by death because he did not commit a murder.  It was a difficult case; here is the background.

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The Patrick Kennedy Case

Medicate to Execute

Insanity is a defense generally available to murder defendants. The legal theory is that if the defendant was not responsible for his actions, he should not be punished as a responsible party would; he should certainly not be executed.  But what of a condemned prisoner who becomes insane after conviction — can he be put to death.  The Supreme Court has been faced with that question in two fascinating cases, that of Alvin Ford in Florida and Michael Perry in Louisiana.

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Non-Triggermen

The Supreme Court has from time to time faced the difficult question of whether a participant in a homicide other than the actual murder is liable to execution.  The question is complex, but no case of this nature that the Court has considered was mired in so much familial violence as that of Arizona’s Tison Family.

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Claims of Innocence

The real nightmare scenario concerning capital punishment is that an innocent person could be executed, despite the protections and balances of the judicial system.  Prosecutors, judges and juries are fallible.  Could it happen?  The Supreme Court has ruled in two cases where the defendants’ defense was a claim of actual innocence.  Joseph O’Dell was condemned in Virginia, Leonel Herrera in Texas. Both were executed, but in the age of DNA and digital evidence, the question of actual innocence is certain to come before the Justices again.

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MOYERS


BILL MOYERS, journalist, author, and managing editor, Moyers & Company

“This book is a lightning strike. It quickens the mind, illuminates the landscape, and guarantees you will see things differently—in this case, how the jagged edges of justice come to bear on decisions of life and death. Clancy and O’Brien are journalists at the top of their class, where facts matter and reporting can read like a novel.”

WALTERS

BARBARA WALTERS, ABC News

“Takes the smoke screen out of the capital-punishment debate and dishes out the realities: the

challenges to judges and lawmakers posed by awful crimes, competing pressures on the scale of

justice, and the role of victims in determining punishment. A great read and more. . . . An

important book.”

TOOBIN

Jeffrey Toobin, writer for the New Yorker, legal analyst for CNN

“A thoughtful and fascinating look behind the headlines of some of the most grisly—and

important—murder cases at the Supreme Court."