INFORMATION & RESOURCE LINKS


We hope the links listed below are useful in providing information, as well as leading to resources and contacts, in a variety of areas. For example, the links take you to Information and Research on the death penalty, sites dealing with Capital Defense organizations, help and resources for Victims of capital crimes, and both Pro-death penalty and Anti-death penalty web sites. Where available, specific links to New York State agencies and organizations are listed. Also, if you know of an informative and helpful web site not listed below, please bring this source to our attention.

The Death Penalty Information Center is a non-profit organization serving the media and the public with analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment. The Center was founded in 1990 and prepares in-depth reports, issues press releases, conducts briefings for journalists, and serves as a resource to those working on this issue. The Center is widely quoted and consulted by all those concerned with the death penalty. The Executive Director is Richard C. Dieter, an attorney who has written and spoken extensively on this subject.

This informational site is presented by the Center for Justice in Capital Cases, at the DePaul College of Law. It boasts section dealing with the history of the death penalty, case law, statistics, and scientific evidence and the death penalty. While parts of the site are still “under construction,” it nonetheless is informative and has links to other capital punishment web sites.

The Constitution Project’s Death Penalty Initiative (DPI) is a bipartisan committee of death penalty supporters and opponents who all agree that the risk of wrongful executions in this country has become too high. The DPI of the Constitution Project was known formerly as the National Committee to Prevent Wrongful Executions.

The crisis in indigent representation created by the closing of death penalty “resource centers” around the nation led to the creation of the Cornell Death Penalty Project. From the outside the project was designed to address three primary tasks – to foster scholarship, particularly empirical scholarship, related to the death penalty and its administration in the United States; to provide an opportunity for Cornell students to participate in the representation of death-sentenced inmates; and to provide information, resources, and assistance to attorneys involved in representing capital clients, to fill in, in part, for the defunded resource centers. The site includes links to other related sites, scholarly articles, and online legal research.

The Center on Wrongful Convictions is dedicated to identifying and rectifying wrongful convictions and other serious miscarriages of justice. The Center has three components: representation, research, and public education. Center faculty, staff and cooperating outside attorneys, and Bluhm Legal Clinic Students investigate possible wrongful convictions and represent imprisoned clients with claims of actual innocence. The research and public education components focus on developing initiatives that raise public awareness of the prevalence, causes and social costs of wrongful convictions and promote substantive reform of the criminal justice system.

Capital defense links

This practice area assists volunteer lawyers who are representing death row prisoners. The practice area was developed by the American Bar Association Death Penalty Representation Project through the generosity of the Open Society Institute and the law firm of Shearman & Sterling.

The Capital Defender Office (CDO) was established under New York State’s 1995 death penalty status and was given the statutory mandate of ensuring that defendants who cannot afford adequate representation in capital cases receive effective assistance of counsel. The statute also charged with CDO with creating an effective system of capital defense throughout New York State. The site includes information on capital representative in New York, as well as a report title “Capital Punishment in New York State: A Statistical Report After Six Years of Representation.”

The New York State Defenders Association is a not-for-profit, membership organization, which has been providing support to New York’s criminal defense community since 1967. Its mission is to improve the quality and scope of publicly supported legal representation of persons of low income. The site includes an alphabetical listing by county of all public defense providers in New York State as well as a most useful section on New York Capital defense, which can be found at – http://www.nysda.org/Defense Services/NY Capital Defense/NY Capital Defense.html.

The National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA) is the nation’s leading advocate for front-line attorneys and other equal justice professionals. That is, those who make a difference in the lives of low-income clients and their families and communities. Representing legal aid and defender programs, as well as individual advocates, NLADA is proud to be the oldest and largest national, nonprofit membership association devoting 100 percent of its resources to serving the broad equal justice community. NLADA serves the equal justice community in two major ways: (1) providing first-rate products and services and as a leading national voice in public policy and legislative debates on the many issues affecting the equal justice community, and (2) serving as a resource for those seeking more information on equal justice in the Unites States.

A Capital Defender’s Toolbox is written and edited by Karl R. Keys, a Massachusetts defense attorney for the condemned. The site was created to assist defense attorneys who represent people who face a death sentence, and includes: form motions and capital defense manuals; appellate briefs; a listing of national and state legal defense organizations and advocacy groups; law review articles on the internet; a thorough compilation of general death penalty links and legal research links; information on recent court decisions; an archive of past issues.

Victim links

Founded in 1976, Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation is a national organization of family members of both homicide and state killings who oppose the death penalty in all cases. Our mission is to abolish the death penalty. We advocate for programs and policies that reduce the rate of homicide and promote crime prevention and alternatives to violence. We support programs that address the needs of victims, helping them to rebuild their lives.

The Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) was established by the 1984 Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) to oversee diverse programs that benefit victims of crime. OVC provides substantial funding to state victim assistance and compensation programs—the lifeline services that help victims to heal. The agency supports trainings designed to educate criminal justice and allied professionals regarding the rights and needs of crime victims. OVC also sponsors an annual event in April to commemorate National Crime Victims Rights Week (NCVRW). OVC is one of the five bureaus and four offices with grant-making authority within the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.

The New York State Crime Victims Board was created under Article 22 of the Executive Law to compensate innocent victims of crime for unreimbursed out of pocket expenses. Since its establishment on August 1, 1966, the Board has provided substantial financial relief to victims of crime and their families by paying unreimbursed crime-related expenses, including medical and funeral expenses, loss of earning or support, counseling, crime scene clean-up expenses, the cost to repair or replace items of essential personal property, reasonable court transportation expenses, and the cost of residing at or utilizing the services of a domestic violence shelter.

Pro-death penalty links

This is a pro-death penalty site operated by the Clark County, Indiana prosecutor’s office. It contains statistics and information on death row, executions, and laws in Indiana. It also provides information of the death penalty in the United States, including execution statistics, methods of execution, and public opinion. The site boasts over 1,000 other dearth penalty links.

ProDeathPenalty.com This site was developed as a resource for those searching the internet for pro-death penalty information and resources. They boast a database of the victims of death row inmates. Most similar databases list the inmate, with very little, if any, information about their victims. Our database is indexed by the name of the victim. Currently, it contains over 1800 names of victims. There are over 3,500 inmates currently on death row, and many have multiple victims so that database will eventually contain about five times as many names as it currently possesses. The site also offers to research questions regarding the victims of a particular death row prisoner.

Anti-death penalty links

New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty (NYADP) is a statewide coalition of organizations and individuals committed to the abolition of capital punishment. NYADP provides information, advocates for public policy and mobilizes and supports people and institutions that share our unconditional rejection of the state’s use of homicide as an instrument of public policy.

Since its inception in 1976, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP) had grown steadily. Initially housed within the ACLU office in New York, NCADP moved into its own offices in Philadelphia in 1982, and then relocated to Washington DC in 1987. located in our nation’s capital, the NCADP is the only national organization with staff and offices devoted exclusively to eliminating the death penalty. The NCADP’s affiliate base includes all major religious denominations, civil and human rights groups, and professional associations. The NCADP is comprised of over 100 national, state and local affiliates and has a membership base in thousands.

The Moratorium Campaign is a nonprofit, educational organization dedicated to obtaining a moratorium on the death penalty. The Moratorium Campaign is comprised of individuals who are working for an immediate halt to the death penalty as a first and necessary step towards the full protection of human rights for all. The Moratorium Campaign’s work includes a nationwide petition drive that provides state groups with information to build membership, lobby legislators and organize ballot initiatives for moratorium legislation.

Catholics Against Capital Punishment was founded in 1992 to promote greater awareness of Catholic Church teachings that characterize capital punishment as necessary, inappropriate and unacceptable in today’s world. The site contains an explanation of the organization’s background and goals, articles from the most recent issues of CACP News Notes, the test of the revised Latin edition of the Catechism regarding the death penalty, an updated bibliography of statements by U.S. Catholic Bishops on capital punishments, and links to other sites.

This site contains a wide range of Anti-Capital punishment resources from the American Society of Criminology’s Critical Criminology Division.

Equal Justice USA was launched in 1990, building on several years of Quixote Center work opposing the death penalty in our home state of Maryland. Our purpose was to build public scrutiny and protest of human rights in the U.S. legal system abolishing the death penalty being a top priority. Since its start, Equal Justice USA’s public education has focused on the injustices perpetrated against the accused and convicted under our legal system. We continually highlighted the corrupting effects of poverty and racism in our tabloid USA, A Look at the Reality: A Human Rights Monitor.